CINEMA
HENRI-GEORGES CLUZOT'S Le Salaire de la Peur won the Grand Prix at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival as did his Quai des Orfevres and Manon at previous Venetian beanos. This latest addition to M. Cluzot's accumula- tion of trophies has been awarded for an uncompromisingly ` powerful ' piece of work, too long, too overloaded with ten- sion, but at many moments both technically and dramatically brilliant. The scene is set in some dim Central American settlement, the purpose of which is undefined but from the tropic squalors of which everybody wishes to escape. Cluzot takes a long time to build up the atmosphere of this place but succeeds magnificently. For the down and outs who have mysteriously collected here, the only hope of earning sufficient money to buy a ticket elsewhere is through being employed to drive lorries loaded with nitro- glycerine for an American oil company. As the smallest bump acts like a detonator the pay is high.
Taking four men, Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli and Peter van Eyck, Cluzot puts them in two lorries, sends them off on a 300-mile run across infamous country, and watches, with a cruelly objec- tive eye, how they react. Under the constant threat of death, and meeting hazards of really astonishing spitefulness, the men are revealed in their true colours, their characters under pressure being sensitively recorded without comment. Where the film fails, perhaps, is in its resolve to give its audiences their full money's worth of excitement. The chapters of accidents are numerous enough to fill a library, and Pelion is piled so high upon Ossa, that a self-defensive numbness, or alternatively an hysteria, takes charge of the viewer towards the end. No single emotion can be sustained for too long, and M. Cluzot has made a mistake in assuming that nerves can be indefinitely stretched. The acting is admirable, Charles Vanel in particular giving a notable performance as the tough man of mystery who turns coward, and Yves Montand acquitting him- self more than honourably as the pleasant youth who is changed, partly through fear, partly through lust for the ultimate monetary rewards, into a Fury. realistic, film, only marred by a surfeit of the good things it offers.
a You Know What Sailors Are is a comedy written by PeterRogers on a theme provided by Edward Hyams in his novel Sylvester. The story centres round a contraption manufactured from a pram and three pawn- broker's balls by an intoxicated naval lieutenant, Donald Sinden, on his night off. With some equally tiddly friends he fixes it to the deck of a foreign destroyer moored alongside his own, and when questioned about it the following morning authori- tatively states it is the 998, a new type of radar. The following sequences, which show naval personnel of all ranks pretend- ing they have heard of the 998, and the endeavours of Naunton Wayne to obtain a specimen for his admiral, are extremely funny, the good old English custom of pass- ing the buck being viewed with both sym- pathy and satire. All seems well and Ken .Annakin, the director, a master of his craft. Matters then deteriorate slowly but, unfor- tunately, surely. They are kept steady for a time by the brilliant acting of Akim Tamir- off who, as the President of Agraria journey- ing home on his destroyer with this secret weapon in his possession, gives one of the best comedy performances I have seen in years. Malapropisms, such as " We shall be blown from here to maternity," spring frequently from his lips, but he manages to be ridiculous, dignified and lovable all at once. The film swoops into low waters when Agraria is reached and dozens of gorgeously clad girls, Dora Bryan in a topee apd a couple of crazy scientists take the stage. Here the picture, which was steering such a steady course in our best comedy traditions, sheers off into fantasy and becomes a rather indifferent musical farce.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
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