Strictly for adults of a sort is a fairy-tale you can spot by its title, Pocketful of Miracles…. The odd thing about it isn't its badness but the fact that, bad as it is, it is made by Frank Capra, that legendary name, and made through and through, produced and directed; and it is tempting to read permanent declensions into what, after all, may be just one of those aberrations that warm-hearted souls are liable to. Capra, champion of the underdog, the simple and the inarticulate, might suddenly—it isn't all that surprising—be carried away into sentimentality by a tale about a tippling old apple-woman and her golden-hearted gangster friends. The surprise is in how far he has gone, how obvious, even how unprofessional it all seems.

Isabel Quigly, "The Gulliver Game," in The Spectator (© 1962 by The Spectator; reprinted by permission of The Spectator), Vol. 208, No. 6967, January...