Storm Center

The first explicitly anti-McCarthyite Holly-wood movie, Storm Center took five years to reach the screen. Davis plays a small-town librarian who refuses, on principle, to remove a book called 'The Communist Dream' from the shelves when the local council deems it subversive. Her stand is undermined by a political opportunist (Keith) who plays on the citizens' intrinsic suspicion of intellectuals and anything remotely pinko. The only film directed by Taradash (who scripted From Here to Eternity and Rancho Notorious), it is, sadly, a didactic, laborious piece, making far too much play with a confused small boy driven from an eager exploration of books into angry arson on the library. Played with some conviction by Davis, though.