CINEMA
Stop, You're Killing Me. (Warner.) Desperate Moment.
(Gaumont.)—The Stars Are Singing. (Plaza.) MR. DAMON RUNYON'S immortal works are fairly well known in this country, but it is a great joy to.meet a range of his ludicrous thugs in the flesh as it were. That glorious blend of sentimentality and callousness, of sheer bad taste .and irresistible comedy is splendidly exemplified in Stop, You're Killing Me, a story of a racketeer's efforts to go straight in a world.strewn with pitfalls. Mr. Broderick Crawford and Miss Claire Trevor play the leads, backed up to the hilt by Messrs. Charles Cantor, Sheldon Leonard and Joe Vitale as the gangster's ex-henchmen. The action is more or less indes- cribable, being concerned with four corpses which have unexpectedly been abandoned in Mr. Crawford's house, a daughter in love with a policeman, a small boy with a water-pistol and a thief with a million dollars in a black bag, all circulating round a vast mansion in Saratoga with confused intentions. Only the trunk, it seems, is missing.
Flavoured with arsenic but favouring ermine rather than old lace, it bears a strong resemblance to the play London loved so well in the war. It is warmly affectionate and quite outrageous. The corpses are first dumped on enemies' front lawns and then, when it is learned that there is a reward offered for the bodies, hastily collected and brought home—and somehow the mixture of the two makes it impossible to take offence. Mr. Runyon's tough types all have golden hearts; they are sweet to their wives, loyal to their pals. It is just that, almost absent-mindedly, they are criminals.
Desperate Moment is not supposed to be great fun, but rather- great drama. The story is about a Dutchman who, at the end of the war, is falsely imprisoned on a charge of having shot an English soldier; of how he escapes and seeks witnesses, each of whom dies mysteriously before he can reach him, to his innocence. It is a pity that these epics of post-war Europe all follow a familiar pattern. One feels one has been here many times before, which perhaps explains why it seems so hard to maintain an interest in the plot, so hard to share in Mr. Dirk Bogarde's excellent interpretation of suffering or to applaud Miss Mai Zetterling's sensitive handling of a prqsaic part. They are both extremely good, and the film's direction by Mr. Compton Bennett, set against the authentic back- grounds of Berlin and Hamburg, detailed and imaginative. Yet for all its patent virtues the picture is curiously flat, a thriller without a thrill, a romance without a heart. It is, in fact, just another film.
* * * * In case anyone should be insensitive enough not to like the crooning of a newcomer, Miss Rosemary Clooney, The Stars are Singing has roped in the services of Mr. Lauritz Melchior and Miss Anna Maria Alberghetti to attract the classically musical film-goer. Miss Alberghetti is a second Deanna Durbin, with a pure- lovely voice which is surprisingly boring as so many lovely pure things are. She has a charming personality, a sad little face and laughing eyes, but she sings far too many lengthy arias from Italian operas. Mr. Melchior sings Because and Pagliacci. Miss Clooney does not sing, within the meaning of the act, at all. I feel keenly ashamed that I liked her best. Save for the occasional musical doldrums, the film is a good one; friendly, amusing and unpretentious. Between the vocal bombardments Mr. Tom Morton dances with admirable elan, and Mr. Bob Williams is exquisitely funny with a morose cocker spaniel which refuses to perform a single trick. Mr. Williams's optimistic efforts to train him are so endearing that it seems almost unkind to laugh. As for Miss Clooney, her gramophone fans need have no fear that she will let them down. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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