Executive Suite. (Empire.)---Trouble in the Glen. (Gaumont.)—Children of Love. (Continentale.).
IT is.a common belief in the States that on the top of the highest buildings in all American cities there are plushy penthouses in which the directors of Big Business smoke their cigars amid a wealth of olde oak panelling and make or wreck fortunes by a few pithy words into a dictaphone. Executive Suite sets out to prove that the lions in the business jungle have similar desires, similar virtues and weaknesses to those of the rabbits, and that their lives are by no means as delightful as is supposed. After the d ath of a big furniture manufacturer, which of his five vice-presidents is to succeed Win? The calculating, ambitious Frederic March, the experienced but ageing Walter Pidgeon, the jolly but adulterous Paul Douglas, the spirited William Holden or rugged Dean Jaggor? Worried to the brink of stomach ulcers, these rivals for power, spurred on or held back by their women, jockey for position, and it says much for this film that their characters are so fairly presented one becomes as anxious about the issue as they are. Though business, however big, is not essentially dramatic, nor indeed particularly attractive, Robert Wise has made a fine film which manages to be both. He has directed it supremely well. The divided loyalties of doing what is best for the old firm and what is best for oneself, the human pressures behnd the scenes, the sympathies and antipathies, are note d with rare wider- stand ng and record d with restraint, and each character is m:rnat ly studied down to it; last d _tail. The ceol Mr. March's pre- occupation with his p piring hands is a brilliant touch. With such a cast the acting calls for no shade of efiticism, and as added to the aforementioned there are Sla Iley Winters, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck and Louis Calhern—in all, nine stars—the firmain nt is a-dazzle w.th light, in fact radiantly active.
Trouble in the Glen starts well with Orson Welles as a rich South American laird of a castle in Scotland giving a sardonic analysis of the Scottish character, a brief résumé of the nation's-history and some wry comments on its weather. All seems set fair for another Whisky Galore. But no sooner has Mr. We lies removed his vast frame and his compell ng eye from the centre of the screen than we, as well as ts glen, are in real trouble. The story concerns the closing of a road, the visit of an American ex-GI, Forrest Tucker, to see his little girl, Margaret McCourt, who has polio, the poaching activities of some tinkers headed by Victor McLaglen and Jam McCallum, and the headstrong pride of a heavily tarianed Margaret Lockwood. Between the Scylla of mawkish sentimentality and the Charybdis of pawky humour the film reels unhappily, overplay, d, overdresst d, over-Scotch and overwh, lmingly embarrassing. Herbert Wilcox has directed this lamentable picture with the best of intentions, but my Graham blood P joices that even the heather could not bear such dishonour and died into a dirty brown before the film was completed.
Directed by Leon& Moguy and starring Jean-Claude Pascal, Etch ka Chourcau and Lisa Bourd:n, Children of Love is a long long plea for the reconsideration of the unma Tied mother's place in eociety. The fills is exclusively set in a R Age Matcrnel, and though it is very sincere end very well reted the characters portrayed are too stereotyped to be appealing. Here is the brazen gii I, the innocent, the weak-minded; the under- standing welfare officer, the handeome doctor. Anguish, hysteria, callousness, and a sermon on the joys of motherhood are all in their appointed p!accs, and one has a strong feeling of having, cinematically speaking, been here b...fore. Unfortunately too, a message of th;s kind has to be very vehemently put across, stir in one a deep pity or an urge for rc form, if one is to spend two how's in the company of fifty women in varying stages of pregnancy. Only a direct arrow to the heart can counteract the effect of those bulging maternity smocks and Children of Love, for all its integrity, fails to hit the bull's-eye.
• VIRGINIA' GRAHAM
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