THE CINEMA
"They Live by Night." (Academy.)—" The Window." (Academy.) —fi Sorrowful Jones." (Canton.) HOLLYWOOD, like the modest arbutus, occasionally puts forth fragrant flowers which, unheralded by the usual fanfare of publicity, are liable to die unnoticed. Presumably They Live by Night and The ,Window were offered to the trade with a deprecating gesture. These are, it was said, just experiments, nothing more. Destined for the uncharted wilds of such places as the King's Road, these two films
have been rescued from oblivion by the Academy, for which act of mercy it deserves the deepest gratitude.
They Live by Night might have been an ordinary thriller, con- cerning as it does the violent exploits of three escaped convicts, Messrs. Howard da Silva, Jay Flippen and Farley Granger, the last named aged twenty-three and a murderer at the age of sixteen ; but it is not an ordinary thriller by virtue of its love story which runs like a delicate silken thread throughout its length. Born to and bred in a world as harsh asit is ugly, where money is the sole desideratum, where no graciousness or beauty sees the light of day, a world of mean suburbs and petrol stations, of hoardings and twenty-dollar marriage offices, Mr. Granger and Miss Cathy O'Donnell fall in love. Their fate has been decided for them long ago, but unaware of it they seek and find, though arduously, a brief, tender and innocent happiness. Both of them give exquisite performances, capturing the half-sad, half-gay moods of young love and pinning them like struggling butterflies to the sordid and inescapable back- ground of their daily life. They must be warmly complimented, and so also must the director, Mr. Nicholas Ray, for his Gallic approach to an American social problem. If only he had taken the trouble to be a Frenchman we should be licking his boots in ecstasy.
The Window, which is in the same programme, is directed by Mr. Ted Tetzlaff, and in the brief hour at his disposal he manages to stamp a lasting impression of terror on one's mind. Bobby Driscoll is the little boy who, on a hot summer's night, goes to sleep on a fire escape and sees through a window a man being murdered. As he is renowned for his prowess in inventing impossible stories, neither his parents, played most sympathetically by Mr. Arthur Kennedy and Miss Barbara Hale, nor the police believe him, and indeed he is taken by his mother to apologise to the murderers for telling fibs about them. Left alone, locked in his room for his naughtiness, the child is terrified that the killers, knowing he knows of their crime, will also try to kill him, and in fact this is just what they do try to do. The chase down empty streets, over roofs and through a condemned house is such a strain on one's nerves that it is almost unbearable, and such is the quality of Mr. Tetzlaff's direction coupled with Master Driscoll's astonishing acting ability that one is only half a scream away from having hysterics for three- quarters of this short, admirable, exquisitely photographed, horrifying little film.
A very different cup of tea is Sorrowful 7ones, a screen-play adapted from another screen-play adapted from a short story by the late Mr. Damon Runyon. Mr. Runyon's characters are usually eccentric and sentimental, and on this occasion the hero, played by Mr. Bob Hope, is a tight-fisted bookmaker with a heart of gold who finds he has adopted a girl of four. For some time this film skates along merrily enough on not noticeably treacherous ice, and we even surmount the obstacle of bedtime prayers, but when Mary Jane Saunders, who is a bit too lispy and curly for my taste, falls out of a window, the ice cracks ominously. That Mr. Hope brings a full-sized horse into the hospital to cure the little patient does nothing to fortify the crust, and we sink, all hands, into the silky waters of bathos. Miss Lucille Ball, attractive as ever but with little to do, is the woman who is brought together with the man by
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