CINEMA
"Retour a la Vie." (Academy.)—“ State Secret." (Plaza.)— ,, Chance of a Lifetime." (Leicester Square.) FIVE episodes, unrelated to one another save in their common plea for tolerance, go to the making of Retour a la Vie. The heroes are five returned prisoners of war, and except in the case of M. Francois Perier, who becomes a bartender in a W.A.A.C. hostel, their homecomings are lugubrious, not to say grim. Although some of France's finest actors, such as Messieurs Jouvet, Noël-Noel and Reggiani, give of their talents liberally, the little films, diversely directed, are not particularly good. Only the first, directed by M. Henri Clouzot, in which an embittered and crippled M. Jouvet tries to unseal the mind of a German torturer, and the third, directed by M. Andre Cayette, in which a middle-class family squabble about money matters round the moribund body of Tante Emma just returned from Dachau—only these two have Any real quality. The latter is, indeed, intolerably moving, and Mme. de Revinsky, so terribly emaciated that one cannot but believe she actually was in a concentration camp, produces, without speaking more than one sentence, a sense of suffering's immense distance from sinning. Retour a la Vie preaches the salutary effect of suffering, and. also observes with cynicism how small is a drop of love in an ocean of mistrust. 4, is moral, it is tragic, it is occasionally amusing, but for all that it is a disappointing film.
* * * * State Secret, on the other hand, is not in the least disappointing. Messrs. Frank Launder_and Sidney Gilliat have written and directed this Ruritanian thriller wittily and well. I have always complained of foreigners speaking pidgin English on the films, and here, as in answer to Illy prayers, the authors have invented a bogus language called Vosnian, deriving from Italian, Dutch and schoolroom I should guess. It is a lovely joke, and I revelled in it. Mr. Douglas Fairbanks plays the part of an American doctor who is brought to Vosnia to operate on its dictator, and when the dictator dies, a fact which at all costs must be kept secret, is in peril of his life. Miss Glynis Johns, who sympathetically pounds up mountains after him, and Mr. Jack Hawkins, as the pleasant Chief of Police, are first-rate, and there is a highly pleasing sketch of a spiv by Mr. Herbert Lom. A good amusing thriller, just a shade perhaps on the long side. * * * * Mr. Walter Greenwood's delightful play, The Chance of a Life- time, has somehow turned itself into a slow and exceedingly rancorous film. The British workmen who here take over a factory from their boss, Mr. Basil Radford, and get into a dreadful tangle with bureaucracy, are some of the most unpleasant men I have ever encountered. No matter the circumstances, they yelp like hungry wolves, and though the ostensible message of this film is that neither management nor workroom can exist apart, and that both brains and brawn are needed for survival, the only impression one gets is that the British workman is disgruntled, pugnacious, greedy and rude. I refuse to believe it. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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