CINEMA
The Member of the Wedding. (Berkeley.) —Kiss Me Kate. (Empire.)—It Should Happen to You. (Leicester Square.) JULIE HARRIS'S performance in the adaptation of Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding, a detailed study of adolescence, is a tour de force. As the twelve-year-old tom- boy, gawky with a ragged crew-cut, subject to fierce . rages and ecstasies and tears, as the extraordinary child who, feeling she belongs .nowhere, falls love, in a wild despair, with her brother s wedding, feels she is so much a part of it she tries to go on its ensuing honeymoon, Miss Harris is never off the screen. Ugly, forlorn, maddening and touching, she is seen wrestling with an inner turbulence she cannot explain, bursting with feelings she cannot define, a girl on the fringe of growing up, a tempestu- ous waif utterly confused by the com- plexities of her emotions. Miss Harris is superb and so too is Ethel Waters as the coloured housekeeper, rough, affectionate, firm and understanding. With Master Brandon de Wilde, all stares and spectacles, who also gives a notable performance, this picture offers a feast of good acting. In a sense The Member of the Wedding is a collector's piece, for the strangeness of the theme and Fred Zinnemann's concentrated handling of it is not everybody's dish by any means ; but for those who want some- thing unusual, here is everything they could wish for.
3D is definitely improving. Not that it improves a film in any way, cutting out close-ups as it does and diminishing the size of the players, but certainly in Kiss Me Kate the eyes are not pulled squinting out of their sockets. The only discomfort, from a technical point of view, is caused by the nose part of the necessary pair of glasses, a steel wire which slowly eats into the flesh with almost indelible results. From a different point of view, however, Kiss Me Kate is discomforting. The script ever was and it seems ever will be rotten, and only two of Cole Porter's tunes and one of his lyrics are up to standard. George Sidney has directed this musical version of The Taming of the Shrew with a good deal of verve but a minimum of imagination. It is possible that he has been constricted by the additional dimension, an anachronism though this is, but certainly has thought up nothing new, and once again all movable objects are thrown at the audience, twc:r blas6 now even to blink. Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel,
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
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