13 FEBRUARY 1948, Page 13

THE CINEMA "The Swordsman." (Empire.) — " Person! Column." (New

Gallery.) The Swordsman is a Hollywood version of seventeenth-century clan warfare in the Highlands of Scotland. This little corner of Cali- fornian Cromarty comes to us in vivid technicolor, and whisks us at never less than a gallop from castle to kirk and from kirk to Loch Angeles under a blazing bluebag sky ; and as we spur our foam-flecked horse hither and thither, we pass perspiring clansmen, kilted and jabot-ed, dirked, bonneted and besporraned, with such a disregard for the boiling Californian sun it is positively painful to see them stumping along, their bagpipes pressed to their parched lips. Although the Scotch will presumably find much to laugh at in this film—indeed its silliness is unrivalled—it is nevertheless a virile rumbustious affair, with plenty of duelling and a positive glut of urgent riding. Not only are these Scotsmen as wild and as brave as young hawks, but they have also mastered the circus-rider's technique for mounting a horse and prefer, being constantly in an infernal hurry, to vault on to their steeds from the back rather than by the more usual method of approaching them obliquely and then hopping round on one foot. They are all fair of face and clean as whistles, however dastardly, and their bonny wee brogues as well as their blinding big tartans are neatly pressed into pattern. Mr Larry Parks, all teeth and dash, makes a pleasant and spirited hero, and Miss Ellen Drew, all teeth and tenderness, a becoming heroine. She looks lovely, even when she is wearing her little seventeenth-century plastic mackintosh cape, and it is a wonder that on the night she rode so furiously to the rescue she was neither ballooned up to heaven by the yards and yards of blue riding habit that trailed out behind her, nor caught by the plume of her hat on the point of a star.

* * *

Hurrah for the psychologists in New Scotland Yard! Here we have Mr. Charles Coburn seeking in the labyrinth of a fog- enshrouded cobblestone London for a murderer who writes poems in praise of death. Although the verses lack everything except an occasional rhyme Mr. Coburn, with an acuteness above the average, realises at once that if he can find a man who likes Baudelaire he will have caught his murderer. The murderer, by the way, adver- tises in the papers for pretty young girls, notifies Scotland "hard in appropriate stanzas that he is about to strangle them, does so and tips their bodies into the river. Miss Lucille Ball is enlisted to act as a decoy, and answers several advertisements with several results before she hits on the right man. Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Mr. George Sanders and Mr. Boris Karloff, each trailing a red herring across the path of justice give admirable portraits of their acting selves, one so bland, the other so bounderish and the third "so beastly. Personal Column is not a film to be remembered, save for one precious moment when an elderly gentleman asks the man behind the bar at the Albert Hall for an aspirin and gets one, but it is a perfectly good entertainment for A wet Wednesday afternoon.

* Four short documentaries made under Government sponsorship were shown to the Press last week, when it was rumoured, a rumour soon to be disproved by The Swordsman, that there were no new feature films on view : The Pool of Contentment, which dealt very amusingly with the troubled waters of a Government typing pool ; Children Learning by Experience, which showed children at play when unaware they were being photographed ; Design for Women, showing how to and how not to decorate a flat ; and The Cumberland Story, a somewhat protracted tale of the resurrection of the mining industry in that county. Each of these pictures has a message from its appropriate Ministry, and it would be an obstinate Civil Servant who did not respond to these intelligent, humorous pointers to a better life. Indeed, it seems a great pity that these films are not for public release, for there is not one of us whose manners, good taste and understanding would not benefit thereby.

VIRGINIA GRAHAM.