CINEMA
Houdini. (Plaza.)—The Jazz Singer. (Warner.)—Our Girl Friday. (Leicester Square.) CHRISTMAS is one of the two major silly seasons in the cinema and this week's ration has nothing controversial, thought-provok- ing, artistic or even very good to bother us. Which is just as it should be, for though we are ready to be entertained, only the top surfaces of our minds are receptive.
The best of a poorish bunch is Houdin!, a brisk colourful film dedicated to that prince of all magicians who spent his working life getting out of strait-jackets, safes, locked trunks sunk in rivers and other seemingly impregnable prisons. Tony Curtis plays Houdini, and I am told he bears a striking resemblance to the original. In any event he is very good-looking and attractive, so young that the years he is supposed to gather in the picture retire abashed, so extrovert that his unhappy dabblings in spiritualism make one laugh. With Janet Leigh as his wife Mr. Curtis races from one hermetically sealed receptacle to another, his feats becoming increasingly dangerous until he is killed by, of all things, an attack of appendicitis while hanging upside down in a glass tank. Houdini may have been a superb craftsman or he may, as some think, have learned the secret of dematerial- isation. He was, anyway, unique, and this uniqueness cannot of course thrill second- hand, his wonders, manufactured by the jiggery-pokery of studio cameras cannot retrospectively amaze. Yet the film is a bright bit of showmanship, well directed by George Marshall, and imbued with the appropriate holiday spirit, tinselled and • magic.
To be or not to be a cantor is the theme of the revived, rehashed The Jazz Singer, its hero being torn between his father's desire for him to follow in the family's religious tradition and his own desire to be a success in show business. Starring Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee, the film is sentimental and not exceptional in any way save that we are given liberal helpings of Jewish chants which are heartbreakingly lovely. The other musical items, old favourites such as Just One of those Things and Lover are jazzed up to such an extent they are almost unrecog- nisable. Danny Thomas is by nature a comedian and seems a little uneasy living in an emotional quandary, but he has a pleasant fruity voice and when he is given the chance to tell funny stories he tells them extremely well. Miss Lee is a silver-blonde, cut to pattern and patented ages ago by Hollywood, but Mildred Dunnock and Eduard Franz, as Mr. Thomas's parents, have personalities of their own even if what they have to say comes as no surprise. The story, confessedly, has a certain originality, religion not usually being employed as a factor in the success story, yet somehow the overall impression is one of banality.
Noel Langley's Our Girl Friday leaves a more positive mark. It is a desert island comedy of quite outstanding tedium. Joan Collins, George Cole, Robertson Hare and Kenneth More as castaways should by rights be excellent value, but they spend an hour and a half childishly quarrelling with one another, their arguments lacking wit, polish and even, credibility, and it is all sadly wearisome. Miss Collins has to be absurdly haughty, Mr. Cole's smart-aleck rudeness has as much spontaneity as a schoolboy's gag-book, Mr. Hare's pom- posity is laboriously contrived and only Mr. More pretending, not very convincingly, to be a drunken Irish stoker, is tolerable company. The little but is there, the sun, the sea, the sand and the sex motif, but the characters placed in their midst are so devoid of charm they inspire grief rather than laughter.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
Previous page
