Cinema: The New Pictures, Jan. 4, 1954

Act of Love (United Artists) for no particular reason transposes the 1949 Alfred Hayes novel, The Girl on the Via Flaminia, from Rome to Paris. The novel, an equally pointless attempt to transpose A Farewell to Arms into a contemporary setting, proved that you can't get high twice on the same old vermouth. Act of Love shows that the third time around can be a distinctly sobering experience. The hero of the picture is a G.I. intended by the script to be just like every other G.I., and played by Kirk Douglas with aggressive averageness. The heroine is the girl of...

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