15 NOVEMBER 1957, Page 18

Adonais '57

The James Dean Story. (Continen- tale.)—Time Limit. (Leicester Square Theatre.) --- Les Girls. (Empire.)—An Eye for an Eye and On the Bowery. (Cameo- Polytechnic.)

nearly two years ago. Its interest is sociological more than biographical, since it is less a study of James Dean himself than a portrait of all the half- grown, the groping and the unformed, in the per- son of a boy who, by chance, had his own private brilliance as well; he was a boy in whom others could recognise every fumbling advance from

childhood, every retreat that they had known; who was like a million others, smallish and spectacled, but who showed them, the rest of the world, the grown-ups----,showed them with his success and finally with his violent death. He was everything we talk of as young—an Angry Young Man (American style), a classic Outsider; but it is pointless to talk of outsiders when every second adolescent these days sets up as one, at least in countries where adolescent freedom is part of the general way of life. The youngster who is not mixed up today is a good deal odder than the one who is; the healthy-minded (whatever that may be) a good deal rarer than the bloody-minded; the good scout a lot screwier than the Teddy boy. James Dean should conic as no surprise to the hoariest insider : his slouch, his manner, the expression of eyes and mouth, the sulky good looks, the whole stance at;e all essential, distilled net : youth in the 1950s. No wonder his legend has mushroomed up. There is nothing particularly sinister or necrophilic about the hysterical cult of Dean since his death—the large quantities of fan- mail still sent to him, the refusal to accept him aS dead—for death is the only thing that really pickles youth, and while his contemporaries age James Dean remains forever twenty-four and mixed up, and the rest of it. A youth of twenty- four can just, but only just, carry the burden of his childhood with the obvious pathos of James Dean; soon, had he lived, he would have had to shuffle it off and turn into a man. He was spared answering the question : 'What kind of a man'?' by a quick death with just the right romantic opportuneness. So, as he stopped on the dot of adolescent midnight, he froze into an archetype. Through all the fuss and the symbols—drums and dead seagulls and so on—he comes out, as a per- son, rather well. The film is the sort that could be made for auY dead person who had left a reasonable spoor be. hind .him. From photographs, drawings, taPe recordings, interviews with family and friends, scenes where he spent his boyhood, where he ve01.1 to school, a portrait is built up. The boy was senst' tive and talented, gifted in various directions, dabbling in most of the arts : he painted', sculpted' wrote poetry, was musical, acted of courSe; later he hoped to become a film director, a writer, cvell a businessman; he raced cars, loved bullfights, played drums, had a horse and a dog. He was turbulent and lonely, without immediate, obvious, reasons for it; success came easily, he had a fon° family and a pleasant stable background of far0 ing folk rooted for some generations in the salve., place. But his mother died when he was eight, a° besides, for his turbulence there were the nornial two reasons—his age, and the age he lived In' The film is over-discreet, and seems to be hushing up the difficulties that Life with Dean must have presented : it is significant that among those inter' viewed there are hardly any of his working col- leagues. Still photographs are used with such mobility that you get a feeling of movement arid behaviour from them; and there is an interesting scrap of a film test Dean made that has never, °f course, been shown publicly before. Directors: George W. George and Robert Altman.

Time Limit: This highly intelligent film has been squeezed out. Direeted by Karl Malden (who played Baby Doll's husband), acted 1?).' Richard Widmark and Richard Basehart, questions the basis of war-time behaviour, ill .° case of apparent treachery. Sinewy if rather static direction; tough, restrained acting, especially good from Basehart. Note three minor players : Dolores Michaels (the nymphomaniac iQ The Wayward, Bus), Martim Balsam (the head juryman in Angry Men), and June Lockhart as the traitor s wife.

Les Girls would be a dull musical if it were not for Kay Kendall, who knocks even the livelY Mitzi Gaynor into a cocked hat with her over- life-size performance as the bibulous chorus girl- She is the funniest British export for ages. Director : George Cukor. An Eye for an Eye: A very creepy film with Curd Jurgens and Fosco Ltilli as, respectively, the victim and the avenger. Strictly not for entertain- ment, unless you love slow sadism and vultures. Director : Andre Cayatte. In the same pro- gramme, Lionel Rogosin's documentary abont New York drunks, On the Bowery. 1SAIIEL QIJIGLY