25 JANUARY 1946, Page 12

THE CINEMA

"To-morrow is Forever." At the Odeon.—" This Love of Ours." At the New Gallery.—" Echoes of Applause." At the Wamcr.

IT is in rather dubious taste, almost unfair, to criticise the first two films on the list, like being superior about popular novels at a country tea-parry when the hostess obviously has the new Louis Bromfield on her bedside table. For that is roughly what these two films are, good time-passers if you have nothing better to do with the rather small number of hours in the day. They are inoffensive, competent and slightly old-fashioned ; they will be enjoyed by large numbers of people to whom they will do absolutely no harm at all. The screens of the world demand a large number of films every year, just as the circulating libraries require an endless stream of new books, and they cannot all be good. And if a lot of people like a nice quiet time in the cinema watching a lot of nice clean nincom- poops meandering about and do not want to be upset by too much laughter or- too many tears, then the films made for them might as well be pleasantly made. That is what both these films are, and if I write about To-morrow is Forever it is only because the plot is slightly less improbable than This Love of Ours and is an even more perfect example of this necessary type of film. The people we cleaner and neater to start with and the problem is even less disturbing, at least in so far as it appears to affect the characters and their lives. Claudette Colbert is happily married to George Brent and still has loving but reasonably subdued memories of her first husbar.d, Orson Welles. (This is very definitely a film where there is no characterisation other than that supplied by the ready-made characters of the actors. It's just Colbert, Brent and Welles, and although they have other names in the story, they ate still very definitely Colbert, Brent and Welles.) Her son by ber first husband wants to join the R.A.F. in 1939, but unhappy memories of her husband's death in the 1914-1918 war causes her to be even more upset than ordinary maternal feeling would warrant in such a situa- tion. But help is at hand, for her first husband was really only badly disfigured and, not wishing to upset his wife by returning to her, became a chemist in Austria, from which country he is now a refugee and is indeed working in George Brent's chemical works. He is even a guest at Miss Colbert's house, but although he recognises her, as how could he fail to do seeing that she has not changed one iota in the intervening nineteen or twenty years—even her hair style is as charming as ever, because it is exactly the same—she does not recognise him. And here the film establishes itself firmly in the comfortable class by presenting Orson Welles not as a really dis- figured man a all, but as Orson Welles with a beard, a limp and, an occasional guttural accent. This makes Miss Colbert's part rather difficult to act, because she is obviously no ninny, but it does makes the whole film quite safe for all to see. Apart from a faint look of distress now and then, as though she thought that she might have a ladder in her stocking, but would not like to look at it in front of a guest, she never appears to have a care in the world. It would be unfair to tell you how the plot is eventually unravelled, as unfair as cheating at snap, but during the unravelling the film does for a little while become rather near to reality and is sensible and genuinely interesting. But after a Pirandelloesque discourse by Orson Welles on the subject of who he really is the film goes back to normal and all ends happily. And just in case anywhere in the film there is any chance of the audience getting an emotional shock, the strong syrupy music is introduced a long time before it happens and gives everyone due warning that there may be tears ahead.

Echoes of Applause is a potted history of the picture that starts in ancient Greece with a girl outlining the shadow of a man's head on a wall and ends with the arrival of the talking film. As the film takes under an hour to show, it must be admitted that it is all rather a scramble which the commentary does little to explain. But it is a most entertaining film, because it is packed with fascinating pic- tures of all kinds. Old-fashioned lantern slides, daguerretypes, silhouettes, camera obscuras and Leonardo da Vinci flash on and off the screen with bewildering rapidity, but are all endlessly irterest- ing while they are briefly there. Later there are extracts from many silent films, a lot of which I had not seen before and one of which, D. W. Griffith's The Female of the Species,I am determined to see