CINEMA
Ivanhoe. (Empire.)—Diplomatic Courier. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) —Kangaroo. (G aumont.) I HAVE always thought Ivanhoe a particularly boring book, but Mr. Richard Thorpe's film of it is such a riot of chivalry, such a splendid bashing about of knightly figures, such a glorious quivering of arrows, such a prancing of horses in striped petticoats that it is obvious that I was wrong. All the characters are beautiful and brave, even when their souls are armoured in wickedness ; and the eyes are dazzled, held, hypnotised, the heart mounted lance-high and strung with favours. Mr. Robert. Taylor, Miss .Joan Fontaine, Miss Elizabeth Taylor, Mr. George Sanders, Mr. Felix Aylmer and Mr. Emlyn Williams, surrounded by warriors in Technicolored panoplies, discharge their duties with a flourish, and all the trumpets sound for them on every side. The battles are brisk and unbloody ; the boulders crash from the battlements ; the ram batters on the door ; swords flash ; bows ping. And in the lists Ivanhoe and Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert thwack tinnily at each other with axe and spiked ball, or charge, plumes flying, to be unhorsed with the sound of crashing buckets. Ah, those were the days, when black was black and white was white and men were men and Women were glad of it 1 Thank heavens they are over.
Thank heavens too, in a way, that Diplomatic Courier is over— . over for me that is—for this excellent film works havoc with the nervous system. Mr. Tyrone Power is the courier sent from Washington to pick up a little packet of Soviet plans in Salzburg, and with the simplicity of all nice clean-living Americans runs his head into the Iron Curtain repeatedly. Smoothly directed by Mr. Henry Hathaway, who has a real gift for getting his audience into a lather of anxiety to the point when it can 'barely resist urging the characters out loud to take care, this thrilling story of spies and counterspies is only marred by its two heroines, the Misses Patricia Neal and Hildegarde Neff, the former abominably brazen, all smart talk and shoulders, the latter sodden with tears. One of them is a good girl, one df them is bad, but both are tiresome. Supporting Mr. Power, who is his usual puzzled self, are Mr. Stephen McNally, Mr. Karl Malden and a number of sinister gentlemen in homburgs whom only Mr. Power could fail to recognise as enemy snoopers. It is interesting to note, by the way, that Russia and not Gluvonia or Mecklenstein is the stated " enemy." Hollywood, at any rate, knows there is a war on.
Kangaroo, as might be surmised by those on the qui vive, is an Australian story. As is usual in down-under films, much of the action is obscured by dust at* the ear deafened by the lowing of cattle, this time wretched beasts dying of thirst in a parched and inflammable land ; and on no single occasion is Australia made to look anything but acutely repellent. In this very mediocre film, directed by Mr. Lewis Milestone, the best sequences are those dealing with Sydney at the turn of the century. Here we have Mr. Peter Lawford and Mr. Richard Boone, bowler-hatted gamblers bent on robbery, scheming in an atmosphere of conlmunal mistrust, the help-yourself and devil-take-the-hindmost attitude of a pioneer people. Here is an authentic tang, a full-blooded liveliness which bodes good. Unfortunately, when the two adventurers escape into the hinterland, there to meet Miss Maureen O'Hara, her father Mr. Finlay Currie and Mr. Chips Rafferty as a policeman, the script becomes naïve, the acting amateurish and the direction faltering. In an effort to squash all of Australia's least attractive facets into a short space of time—drought, snakes, bush-fires, stampedes, dust and death—it loses coherence and rambles ineffectually.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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