CINEMA
"Highly Dangerous." (Leicester Square.)—" Plus de Vacances pour k Ron Dieu." (New Gallery.)--" I Shall Return." (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Highly Dangerous is a -comedy thriller with Miss Margaret Lock- wood, head sunning over with curls, as a research worker in the field of lethal bugs. Despatched by the Imperial General Staff to probe the secrets of germ warfare in one, of the more unpleasant Ruritanian countries, she is captured, microscope and all, and sub- jected to a drug which is supposed to make her tell the truth. All it does, however, is to recall to her the last wireless programme she heard before she left England—Dick Barton—and with an unwilling American journalist, Mr. Dane Clark, in tow, she proceeds, on Barton lines, to perform deeds of exemplary courage and enter- prise. This is, I think, an amusing idea, and that able director Mr. Roy Baker has expanded it into quite an entertaining film. He should, though, have been a little more certain as to whether it was a farce or a tragedy he was directing. Grimness and giggles do not mix happily and leave the audience uncertain as to how to behave.
* * The French film at the New Gallery, a sort of Gallic version of Our Gang in which a gaggle of Montmartre urchins steal dogs, claim the rewards from their owners and then distribute the money to the deserving poor, is not, in spite of a hopeful start, a vety satisfactory picture. Written and directed by M. Robert Vernay, it is as jumpy as a flea-circus, and, but for the essential innocence of its youthful players, one might suppose the censor had been at it with unflagging scissors. He has, at any rate, seen to it that the English title should be No Holiday (surely an inadequate transla- tion), but one cannot imagine that the numerous non sequiturs, the lack of cohesion and the general feeling of confusion are his handiwork. It's all a pity, as it might have been the greatest fun.
Nineteen forty-two in the Philippines is the setting for 1 Shall Return, a long curate's egg of a film directed by Mr. Fritz Lang and starring Mr. Tyrone Power and Mlle. Micheline Prelle. The good parts are the ones in which the forests, with their hidden canker of Japanese, hold our breathless attention, so beautiful and treacherous, so richly dyed with Technicolor are they. The poor parts are those concerned with human beings, not one of whom manages to seem wholly alive despite sincere efforts at characterisa- tion. The action is swift, violent and exciting, with Mr. Power leading a guerrilla force, setting up a wireless-station and falling in love ; yet because of the sawdust flavour of its personalities it remains just another war picture, colourful but cold.
' VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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