CINEMA
The Square Ring. (Gaumont.)—Beautiful but Dangerous. (Odeon, Tottenham Court Road and Metropole, Victoria.) Tearing myself with difficulty from the attractions of Wimbledon, I have managed to see two films this week. The Square Ring, which has been produced and directed by Michael Relph and Basil Dearden, is an adaptation of the play by Ralph Peterson which had a success at the Lyric, Hammersmith. It is a boxing film and, as is always the case in such pictures, shows the sport to be thoroughly brutal and corrupt It is centred in the dressing room of a stadium , with Jack Warner as a fatherly " handler," Robert Beatty as an ex- champion trying to stage a come-back, Maxwell Reed as a pug who lies down when told to do so, George Rose as a punch-drunk old- timer, Bill Owen as a cocky featherweight proud of his unbroken nose, and Ronald Lewis as a boy facing his first professional fight. The women, licking their chops in the arena or waiting in anguish round the corner are played by Kay Kendall, Joan Collins and Bernadette O'Farrell. This is not a very distinguished film and blobs of grease- paint are still sticking to it here and there, but it does exude the appropriate atmosphere of blood, sweat and tears. The characters are fairly plausible, the fighting convincing, the ringside crowds humorously observed, and there is one piece of acting, by George Rose, which deserves a Lonsdale belt to itself. But boxing is evidently a wearisome and disillusioning business, an illness which takes hold of a man and will not let him go until it kills him, a sad dirty thing strewn With broken dreams ; and this attitude of hopelessness has a depressing effect. To this woman, at any rate, all these bruised limbs and bleed- ing hearts make the folly of man seem almost intolerable.
Beautiful but Dangerous is a whimsical picture with a little touch of Capra about it which does not quite ring the bell. It stars Jean Simmons as a rich girl who goes back to the small Arkansas town which saved her life when she was a baby, there to wreck its peace and simplicity by anonymously distributing largesse to its inhabitants. Robert Mitchum is the fisherman doctor who firmly believes that money is the root of all evil, and he and Miss Simmons, surrounded by excessively rural types; firmly prove his point. Though slightly cloying at times, the film has moments of great charm, and Miss Simmons, though looking sophisticated, retains that fey quality which is one of her major assets.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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