THE CINEMA .
Pursuit." (Academy.)—“ Tokyo Joe." (Leicester Square.)— .. The Red Pony." (Plaza.) Pursuit is an Italian film, the winner of first prizes at the festivals in Venice and Cannes in 1947, and directed by a newcomer to England, Mr. Giuseppe dc Santis. This young man has inherited all the brilliance, the vigour, the passionate partisanship for the poor, the love of crowds and squalor, the obsession with derelict land- scapes, especially puddles, and the delight in unglamorous actuality that has motivated the hands of all post-war Italian directors. The central figures in this drama are an ex-collaborationist, played with tempestuous abandon by Miss Vivi Gioi, and an ex-prisoner of war, Mr. Andrea Checchi. These two complex characters, driven to banditry through unemployment, are extremely well defined and well acted, but really they are of secondary importance to their surround- ings, which speak volumes and point a silent and accusing finger at our old friend, society.
For here we see the chaotic conditions which greeted returning prisoners of war and the bitter struggle fought by these destitute men to re-establish themselves and their families in civilian life. A Government loan, which, small as it is, is going to help their community to re-farm the still mined and sour land, is stolen en route by Mr. Checchi's gang, and the peasants rise in a body to seek vengeance. They straggle across the forlorn countryside—a bit of Italy I have fortunately missed up to now—looking like scarecrows, and the pitiful thing about them is their total lack of self-pity. Voluble, yes ; bitter, yes ; but self-pitying, no. This film is altogether admirable, and it can be the kind you choose—a thriller if you want it, a poignant study of war's aftermath if you do not.
The rugged and relentless countenance of Mr. Humphrey Bogart is with us once again, this time fringed by the not so rugged but equally relentless faces of the Japanese. In Tokyo Joe Mr. Bogart gets so enravelled in a racketeer's web, and sO deeply enmeshed in Miss Florence Marly, who is an ex-spy, that it would take an earnest arachnologist to discover what on earth is happening. Black- mailing, kidnapping, smuggling former Japanese war leaders into Tokyo, coveting another man's wife, attending babies' tea parties, sermonising on America's function in Japan to a man who has just committed hara-kiri—all ihese come Mr. Bogart's way, and it must
be admitted that he takes them in his stride. All the same, in spite of his performance, a performance with which we are, perhaps, becoming a trifle too familiar, and in spite of good workmanlike direction by Mr. Stuart Heisler, this remains a very foolish film. For one thing it is doubtful whether the right approach to a woman's heart is to suggest that unless she leaves her husband one will inform the police that she was a Japanese spy. Russians, and Miss Manly is one of the white variety, are passionate creatures, but even so such a protestation of affection must have a dampening effect. For another, the information, constantly relayed, that America is occupying Japan so that its sons shall grow to be intelligent, re- sourceful and honest citizens is, granted its truth, not foolish but overbearingly self-righteous, and one could almost hear the laughs of the little yellow men tinkling up their voluminous sleeves. A good many laughs tinkled up our flannel ones too.
My colleagues, almost without exception, have damned The Red Pony as being pretentious, but the fact remains that, though shaken by their opinion, I am not fashionable enough to leave go of mine, which is entirely favourable. By no means an ardent lover of the horse, the child or the country, I here nevertheless fell under the spell of all three, and where others found sentimentality and artifici- ality I found reasonableness and charming simplicity. I thought Mr. Steinbeck's script excellent ; I liked the way the inevitable equine tragedy was handled, and, though no one can say that Miss Myrna Loy is suited to the oil-lamp and the apron, I liked her too.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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