CINEMA
CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA. (Marble Arch Pavilion,) — ABOVE Us THE WAVES. (Ode0B.)—THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME Ur. (Leicester Square.)
As a plea for peace, Children of Hiroshima has a gentleness which works far more power- fully on the conscience than could any angry accusations of guilt, Without bitterness or re- criminations the film shows us how savagely the atom bomb has continued to take its toll. A Japanese girl goes to revisit her native city and meets the few of her kindergarten pupils left alive—and an old family retainer. Hideous scars and deformities, blindness, impotence, sudden or slow illness are offered her as mementoes of her home and she re-lives again that day. This reconstruction of the raid and its aftermath is as brief and as devastating a judgement nn civilisation as could be imagined—children playing in the sun, one big aeroplane high up in the blue, one flash, one flower withering, one burnt bird fluttering, a few feet of unforgettable horror—a short sequence, but harrowing and shocking beyond belief. Yet the film is not without hope. The younger generation, of whom there are charm- ing examples, set out into the future with con- fidence, and it is with a reserved politeness that the producer, Kosaburo Yoshimura, suggests that we should see to it that their faith is justi- fied. No one could look and not pray. Every- one should look and vow.
Brave deeds are undoubtedly better than brave words, and as a tribute to the midget submarine crews who disposed of the Tirpitz, Above Us the Waves is, I suppose, a worthy offering. Nevertheless, a film in which the con- versation is almost exclusively technical and in which the characterisation is subservient to mechanics lacks, for all its moments of sus- pense, the humanities, and leaves one regret- fully unmoved. Also it cannot be denied that British films have lost their piquancy, chiefly perhaps because the actors are invariably the same. It seems that once a quarter John Mills, John Gregson, Donald Sinden, James Robert- son Justice and Michael Medwin are being brave in one of the Services, and familiarity with them, as well as with the tensions, stnesses, accidents and horrors of war 'breeds, not con- tempt exactly, but apathy. The film is directed by Ralph Thomas. and an inordinate amount of care has gone to its making, but I fear most of us arc weary of a 'Periscope up,' Periscope up, sir' dialogue, and shamefacedly salute the heroes, if not their achievement, with a stifled yawn.
*
The Night My Number Came Up was written by R. C. Sherrill and directed by Leslie Norman, and it is an excellent study of super- stition as practised by a group of very English people who do not believe in superstition. Michael Hordern dreams that an aeroplane carrying an Air Marshal, a VIP. five other civilians, a girl and a crew of five will crash in Japan, and one by one the conditions of this dream, at first not remotely probable and pooh-poohed and. pooh-poohed by all, are realised. With Michael Redgrave, Sheila Sim, Alexander Knox. George Rose and Denholm Elliott as the main agents for mixing fear and phlegm, the film makes a very plausible thriller.
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