Face To Face

This feature-length film comprises two short story adaptations, Joseph Conrad's"The Secret Sharer" and Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." The connection between the two stories comes in the film's title; in both segments an authority figure is confronted with problematic characters. In "The Secret Sharer," James Mason is a rookie sea captain who discovers that a fugitive has come aboard his vessel. In"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," Preston is a sheriff who is threatened by a gun-toting old-timer. James Agee's screenplay for the latter segment is similar thematically to John Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1959). Steele was the wife of millio...