Cinema
Self-Parody
By ISABEL QUIGLY
Pillow Talk. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) — The Jaywalkers. (Plaza.) — The Shakedown. (New Victoria.) — Happy Anniversary. (London Pav- ilion.) IT had to come : after several good weeks at the cinema a week when everything seems to be caricaturing itself, and you start seeing evil trends for lack of anything else to think about. Best of the depressing bunch is Pillow Talk (director : Michael Gordon: `A' certificate), a fairly glum-making Hollywood comedy on much the same lines as the far brighter Ask Any Girl; in fact a rough synopsis of the plot might do' for either : marriageable New Yorker girl, all bounce and breezy good-nature, meets smooth unmarriageable bachelor in equivocal situation and falls in love with the person (if you see what I mean), but not the man, or, if it makes it any clearer, in practice but not in theory; theory, as the film advances, catching up with practice. Both films include the seductive weekend in Con- necticut country house with six-foot logs in the grate and no visible slaves to light them, ending in heroine's outraged flight, floods of tears, recrimin- ations. Problems, of course, are finally solved, anti-hero returns, sexy fade-out. But Doris Day is no Shirley Maclaine and Rock Hudson, laughable in serious films, is lamentably unfunny when he ought to be. All that saves this film from the lower depths of the week's others is the minor charac- ters : Tony Randall, anti-hero, a whole head shorter than Mr. Hudson but a whole heap more my hero; Nick Adams, the frightful youth, good as ever in a part that gives him no chances; Thelma Ritter, alcoholic char, with her timing as good as ever even on this graceless occasion.
The Jaywalkers (director : Melvin Frank; 'A' certificate) is a nasty and politically-slanted Western, with Jeff Chandler as a Fascist gang- leader, Fess Parker (the most moronic-looking film hero about) as his stooge, and an undercurrent of admiration for their ideas. Cliche-ridden script (`Because we believed that freedom was more than a word,' etc.) ostensibly condemns what Mr. Chandler is up to, while the direction glamorises his person and glorifies his end with a Hamlet-like funeral cortege. The Shakedown (director : John Lemont; 'X' certificate) is a vicious little British piece with Terence Morgan as the flourishing blackmailer and Hazel Court as the policewoman spy. And last comes the worst of the lot, for it is made with most effort and soflops the most appal- lingly: Happy Anniversary (director : David Mil- ler; 'A' certificate), which if Mitzi Gaynor and David Niven were not there to give it an unfor- tunate air of authenticity I would suppose was a piece of crude anti-American propaganda put out by Moscow. Beside me at the press show sat a Communist friend of mine, fairly oozing dis- approval, like Mr. Khrushchev, I imagine, at the can-can they put on for him in Hollywood. And with every one of her outraged grunts I had to agree.
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