THE CINEMA
" That Lady in Ermine." (London Pavilion.)----" Mr. Belvedere Coes to College. (Leicester Square.)—" Don't Ever Leave Me." (Odeon, Marble Arch.) That Lady in Ermine is a curious mixture of gaminerie and trite- ness. Mr. Ernst Lubitsch has ever been famed for his cynical disregard for the conventions, and almost anything of an inconse- quent nature can, and one hopes will, happen in his productions. This Ruritanian musical, however, though it has its moments of splendid flippancy is, for the most part, boring, and neither Mr. Douglas Fairbanks nor Miss Betty Grable can do much with it. It is true that Mr. Fairbanks has a charm that few can equal, and in an assortment of Hungarian costumes he is immensely appealing ;. but both he and Miss Grable, who is abominably miscast, seem uncertain as to what is expected of them. Playing two roles in two centuries, they move in rather wistful confusion through this film, dreaming their dreams, popping in and out of picture-frames and dancing on tables like obedient but puzzled puppies. Neither of them, I think, possesses Mr. Lubitsch's particular sense of humour, and they have the appearance of two Punch-lovers obligingly laugh- Mg at a New Yorker joke to please their hosts. The tunes are good, the lyrics rotten and the colour excellent.
Mr Belvedere Goes to College is also rather a patchy affair, but though it isn't as funny as its predecessor Sitting Pretty, as a vehicle for Mr. Clifton Webb's sardonic personality it serves well enough. This time he plays the part of an elderly author who enrols as a freshman in a college as unbelievably repellent as Hollywood can make it. Surrounded by brash youths and twittcrpatcd maidens, Mr. Webb, who is, of course, a genius, moves tight-lipped and critical, wearing a minute cap on his head and, on one occasion, a false beard on his chin. The very apotheosis of conceit and never, how- ever dire his distress, ruffled, he claims omniscience and proves his claim to be just in every instance. He completes a four-year course in one year, wins the pole vault, cooks superbly, plays the piano— his brief rendering of boogie woogie is stupendous—and he admits
to having taught Huudini his tricks, to have taught the Japanese ju-jitsu and to have been the only man on Admiral Byrd's expedition not to have caught a cold Intolerant, frosty and extremely offensive at all times, Mr. Webb sails through the sea of adolescence like a militant iceberg, and if his epigrams are found, after reflection, nut to be epigrams, he delivers them as though they were, which is half the battle.
If Mr. Webb were all we should be extraordinarily happy, but unfortunately there is a sub-plot featuring Miss Shirley Temple and Mr. Tom Drake. Presumably its sole function is to make one yearn, like a traveller in the desert, for the oasis that is Mr. Webb, for on its own it has no single virtue, not even the ephemeral one of being connected with the rest of the film.
Don't Ever Leave Me is cne of those slapped-together jerry-built no-one-will-ever-notice pictures for which this country is justifiably famous. Adapted from a story by Anthony Armstrong, it tells of a young girl's determination to be kidnapped so that her father, who is an actor, shall notice she exists and not leave her loitering in the schoolroom. Miss Petula Clark is a charming actress, but not even she can make bricks with the material offered her ; and the edifice, supported gallantly though it be by Messrs. Jimmy Hanley, Hugh Sinclair and Edward Rigby, never resembles anything but a pre-tab built in great haste with the minimum of fixtures and the maximum amount of breaks for tea. Faced with this sad offering to the public's intelligence, one cannot help wishing that producers would make arrangements whereby people unconnected with the industry could see and criticise the rushes of films in the making. Anybody bring- ing a fresh eye and car to Don't Ever Leave Me would have advised Miss Betty Box, quite early on, to leave it at once and start again—
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