The Sleeping Tiger. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) — The Seekers. (Odeon.)
— Trio- Ballet. (Rialto.) Icorked, for both Miss Smith and Mr. ogarde in their love-hate relationship, are . companionable as those tigers we hear .o much about. The characters they portray e extremely unsympathetic and they play em extremely well. Even so the film remains unconvincing, and neither Victor Hanbury's brooding though intelligent tlirecting, nor Malcolm Arnold's nerve- Scraping music helps to dispel the illdsion that under a cloak of psychoanalytical Claptrap everybody is being very silly.
The Seekers, directed by Ken Annakin, records the landing in New Zealand in the year 1820 of a couple of sailors, Jack Hawkins and Ndel Purcell, and tells how they make friends with the Maoris, how Mr. Hawkins brings out his bride Glynis Johns _ to start a colony and how , everything temporarily ends in bloody disaster. It is a very boring film. At moments, it is true, the geological features of New Zealand, those spouting geysers and bubbling mud- holes,.those soaring woods angry with birds, the beaches and hills, are able to brighten the dullness, but not, alas, for long. Fettered by a poor and somewhat mealy-mouthed script, the players can find no outlet for their talents, even the redoubtable Mr. Hawkins seeming lost in its barren wastes. The Maoris, charming people as we know them to be, are here at their least attractive, authentically accoutred no doubt with facial weals and matted hair but not photo- genic, not endearing. The final sequences when the beleaguered whites face the native hordes and all is shot and flame are finely directed, stirring the heart from the slough into which it has sunk, but they come, of course, too late.
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Being ignorant of the finer points and more delicate shades of ballet I do not feel I am fitted to pass judgement on the famous Russian ballerina Ulanova ..who appears in the final two of three excerpts from the ballets Flame of Paris, Swan Lake and Fountain of Bakhchisarai, now at the Rialto. She is, I believe, the greatest dancer in the world, and indeed to the lay eye she seems to possess every grace. Yet, boldly courting disaster and agreeable to being scalped, I confess that I cannot see that she is even an entrechat better than Margot Fonteyn. The ballets are beautifully produced on a grand exciting scale, the dancers from the Bolshoi and Leningrad Theatres giving performances which are a joy to watch.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
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