CONTEMPORARY ARTS
CINEMA
Ace en the Hole." (Plaza.) - My Forbidden Past." (London
Pavilion.)--“ Show Boat." (Empire, Sunday.)
'MR. BILLY WILDER, who directed Sunset Boulevard and Lost Weekend, has pulled another winner out of his brain-filled hat, a film which by its detached, cynical view of the Press and the public makes one heartily disgusted and yet inescapably fascinated with both. In Ace in the Hole Mr. Kirk Douglas plays the part of an ambitious reporter looking for a story which will hit the headlines and get him out of Albuquerque and on to a big national newspaper. He finds just what he needs when a man searching for relics in some old Indian caves gets trapped under a fall of stone. Determined to bleed every drop of drama and human interest from the situation, and determined that his story shall fill the front pages for a week, Mr. Douglas bribes the sheriff into ordering rescue operations to be started where they cannot hope to succeed under six days, although he knows full well that properly conducted they could be so in a day. Kept alive through a small hole, the man, movingly played by Mr. Richard Benedict, lies suffering in dust and misery day after day while Mr. Douglas builds up his great dramatic story. Thou- sands of sightseers, though there is nothing to see, pour into the arena, and arc kept there in a state of morbid anticipation by Mr. Douglas's lurid bulletins ; the trade in hot dogs and popcorn is immense ; even a fair arrives. The whole nation is whipped into a frenzy, wireless and television working overtime.
It is horrible—I don't recall feeling so shaken for years—but both • in its crowd-scenes and in its moments in the tomb (the swift changes from pandemonium to silence are painfully effective) is handled with such brilliance that one can only, though feeling slightly sick at being a member of the human race, applaud. Mr. Douglas gives a really great performance, forcing one against one's will to believe that such a tyllie as he portrays exists in the world ; and all the lesser stars, notably Miss Jan Sterling and Mr. Porter Hall, emit a strong and steady light. If anyone doubts the power of the Press or the gullibility of the common man let him now look and be afraid.
Pride in ancestry motivates the actions of a haughty New Orleans family in My Forbidden Past. A skeleton in the cupboard causes Miss Ava Gardner, her unscrupulous cousin, Mr. Melvyn Douglas, and her proud old aunt, Miss Lucille Watson, to ruin the life of a New England doctor, Mr. Robert Mitchum, a forthright type with more elevated views on honour but considerably less background. It is a good film admirably scripted by someone whose name is not on my hand-out and which I missed in the maze of literature at the beginning—unfortunate, as one so rarely wants to pat writers—and directed with a nice sensitive touch by Mr. Robert Stevenson. The atmosphere of dignified decay, of intrigue and snobbishness which characterised the moulting Southern aristocracy at the turn of the century is skilfully.produced, particularly in the case of Mr. Douglas's roué, a man who is blissfully aware of his wickedness and admits, with a charming smile, that he is nauseating, isn't he ? Show Boat, starring Miss Kathryn Grayson and Mr. Howard Keel, with Miss Ava Gardner thrown in as a glamorous but ill-cast make- weight, is just Show Boat. The songs will ever be heavenly, and if here they are embedded in a somewhat bumpy production, like jewelled nails in a flat tyre, they arc always worth waiting for.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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