Acting on his belief that most people become sentimental at Christmas time and are therefore easy prey, New York confidence man "Silk" Wilkins ingratiates himself with millionaire Lawrence Gray, whose wife and little daughter Zelda were lost in a flood eighteen years earlier. After promising to find Gray's daughter, Silk returns to his boardinghouse, where he finds Alice Sheldon attempting to escape her desperate financial straits through suicide.
Kenneth Roberts, George D. Baker
United States
Spoiler-rich analysis ahead—enter the almond shell at your own peril. There’s a moment—wordless, barely more than a flutter of lashes—when Alice Sheldon, draped in someone else’s childhood, studies the cracked porcelain of a doll that once belonged to the real Zelda. Richard Thornton’s camera does not cut; it linger...
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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.
George D. Baker
George D. Baker
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" Spoiler-rich analysis ahead—enter the almond shell at your own peril. There’s a moment—wordless, barely more than a flutter of lashes—when Alice Sheldon, draped in someone else’s childhood, studies the cracked porcelain of a doll that once belonged to the real Zelda. Richard Thornton’s camera does not cut; it lingers, as though the celluloid itself were afraid to exhale. In that hush you can hear the film’s heartbeat: identity is currency, tenderness is forgery, and Christmas is the busiest t..."
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