HUMORESQUE

 Joan Crawford doesn't appear until thirty minutes into "Humoresque"; it's called making an entrance. This time round she's the rich society dame with a drink problem who falls for struggling violinist John Garfield. The thing is she's married but then, that's never stopped her before though John has scruples, (not too many), so you know it's all going to end in tears. Crawford's wonderful playing Crawford and Garfield in remarkably good as the musician with a very large chip on his shoulder and there's very good work from J. Carrol Naish and Ruth Nelson as Garfield's parents and Paul Cavanagh as Joan's weak husband. Clifford Odets was one of the two scriptwriters, (the pseudo-poetic one-liners are clearly his)), Jean Negulesco directed, really rather well, and there's an awful lot of good classical violin playing courtesy of Issac Stern. Unfortunately the deeply annoying Oscar Levant's in it, too, typecast as a wise-cracking pianist but then you can't have everything.