THE CINEMA
"Four Steps in the Clouds." (Curzon.)—" Sans Lendemain." (Studio One.) — " Body and Soul." (Empirii— "I Love Trouble." (Tivoli.) THE new Italian film at the Curzon tells a simple, straightforward story with straightforward simplicity, and I would to heaven that English producers would learn how effective such a thing can be. It seems we never go into our own countryside unless we are seeking a Victorian earl or pursuing an escaped convict, and I can recollect no film in which we have entered the cottages, much less the lives, of ordinary country people—the labourer, the postman or the baker. Four Steps in the Clouds is the acme of unpretentiousness, being merely the tale of how a commercial traveller helps a girl he meets on a journey by pretending to be the father of her fatherless unborn child so that it should be more politely introduced to her parents ; of his one brief night spent in the country, and of his return to his own wife and children in the cramped city flat where he lives. Yet this tale is full of delight, full of enchantment. It is so real, so alive, so completely refreshing, that it acts like a balm on the nervous system and turns the Curzon into a little oasis of peace in a turbulent world. Alessandro Blasetti, the director, knows the value of innocence, the charm of ordinary things left just as they are, and he never underlines a mood or forces the pace, is never sentimental and never plays for cheap laughs. This film is a perfect gem, and in exulting over it I cannot help but contemplate its fellow-travellers on the silver screen with some despair, seeing that they labour so long, so expensively and so often to please us, and are, in contrast to this production, so bad.
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Sans Lendemain can also be recommended unreservedly. This is a quiet tragedy acted with exquisite sensitiveness by Mlle. Edwige Feulliese, who plays the old and hackneyed part of the cabaret artiste who has a little boy at home with so much virtuosity that it sounds like a new lilting masterpiece played on a Stradivarius. The only
man she ever loved, M. Georges Rigaud, turns up again after ten years, and the story tells of her efforts to conceal from him to what depths she has sunk. With her child, her lover and her friend, Mlle. Feulliere hits the right note every time, and she strikes them with such tender gravity, such gay sadness, that one carries the echo of the tune away, far into Oxford Street and the night. * * * * Body and Soul is all about boxing, and is extremely good, although, to my mind, the subject has been treated with too feverish an intensity. Mr. John Garfield gives a fine performance, but he is pursued by brooding cameras and dark music wherever he goes, so that his simplest actions, from the left hook to the jaw to the kiss for Miss Lilli Palmer, are overhung with unnecessary menace. Miss Palmer, however, successfully pricks the psychological bubbles, and brings some soft rays of humour to shine on the black and crooked ways of the boxing world. For there seems no doubt that boxing is a nefarious business, and that the Ring is not as square as it should be. Fighting fans will like this picture, and the rest will marvel, perhaps, that so much corruption, if authentic, should merit such reverent treatment.
* * * * When accompanying elderly relatives to the cinema I find their inability either to grasp the plot of a film or recognise its protagonists rather touching ; but it is another matter when I find myself, as I did seeing I Love Trouble, unable to identify the blondes and at sea regarding the story. I definitely recognised charming Mr. Franchot Tone, and was aware that he was a private detective, but his female associates defeated me completely. Which was which and what they thought they were doing I have no idea. Thus does
age creep up upon one unawares. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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