THE CINEMA
"Anchors Aweigh." At the Empire.
CONSIDERING the number of personal dislikes of mine that they managed to get into Anchors Aweigh I found the film very pleasant. I would be very much happier if I could know that I would not have to hear the Tchaikowski Piano Concerto in B Flat Minor again for at least ten years and the same thing applies to any of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies. (Except that for the latter I :would willingly postpone my next hearing of them until an even later date). It is also better, in my opinion, that concert performers should appear to remain just a little aloof from the general run of life and not be quite as enthusiastic as Mr. iturbi is to prove that they would really be regular fellows if only they had the time. Finally, I find the sort of humour found in the subject of sailors on short leave hunting girls more than a little tedious and sad. Well, not quite finally, because I also dislike cute children, stories about girls who want to be great singers and whose repertoires are as banal as their faces are pretty and anything which involves twenty grand pianos being played simultaneously by young people whose ages range from eighteen to eight. And yet, in spite of all these ingredients, mote suitable for a nightmare than a musical, Anchors Aweigh manages to be a pleasant enotigh entertainment. Everybody in it is so enthusiastic and nice it is difficult not to like it.
There is a new girl, Pamela Britton, who, as yet, is no great actress, but. who holds promise of better things later. As, at the' moment, she has a new sort of face and a pew style of attack, which includes a hint of true pathos, she is a welcome new arrival. Kathryn Grayson,. the heroine, sings prettily, is pretty and has pretty manners. Frank Sinatra, if you can endure the rather sad noises that he makes, is a nice enough fellow and that apfolies to Iturbi, who, has a sort of happy bouncing quality. Then there is Gene Kelly, who is another pleasant fellow until he dances, when be is magnificent. Although one knows that each dance is the result of hard work and brilliant technique they all look as easy as walking. Particularly good are his dance with the cartoon mouse (the animation is so well done that you forget that the two dancers belong to very different worlds), his dance round the dormitory with Sinatra and his completely enchanting dance with the little Mexican girl. This latter sequence might serve as a model for all dance sequences because it flows quite naturally out of the mood of the film at that moment, is really gay and finishes without making you feel that it is the end of the film. The little girl herself is about the only really nice child I have seen in a Hollywood film, as she neither speaks nor, except perhaps in long-shot, even smiles. The camera seems to have caught some of the happy atmosphere, and in the Gene Kelly sequences does a first-class job of really showing him dancing and does not, as cameras so often do, indulge in a lot of showing off itself. Except for the music I found the film very enjoyable, and even in these sequences they have done a nice job photographing Iturbi's hands while playing the piano. Humphrey Jennings and Dame Myra Hess have shown us in the past how endlessly fascinating a pianist's hands can be, although they never thought of putting the camera underneath the piano and shooting up through* glass
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