CINEMA
“ A Handful of Rice." (Studio One.)—" Jolson Sings Again." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)
THIS is always a very difficult week in which to review films—at any rate if one is a woman—for however dedicated one may be to one's duties one cannot help devoting a portion of one's mind to seasonal problems. Faithfully though the eye follows the shadows across the screen, faithfully though the ear listens to words and tunes, it is impossible not to wonder about that wretched turkey, sent off on Saturday and not yet arrived. It is hard not to ponder on the price of tinsel or fret about artificial snow, and, beset by such thoughts a critic finds it difficult to concentrate on the manifestly trivial affairs of film characters. Their passions and prejudices are as nothing compared to the problems set by a Christmas tree which persistently heels over, and a film has got to be very good indeed to grip the attention at such a time. Neither of the two I am reviewing this week was particularly arresting, but I will nevertheless venture to pass judgement on them.
A Handful of Rice. which is being shown at Studio One with Miss Ida Lupino's heartbreak, Not Wanted, is a Swedish film of a semi- documentary nature about a couple of Siamese who, possessing only a goat and a dog, set up house in the middle of the jungle. Although there is an occasional burst of English commentary and a few desultory captions, we are mostly left alone to imagine as best we can what one Siamese is saying to another—a very sensible plan if, at times, a tiny bit tedious. I gather that the film is not intended to be sensational, but rather " to record the destiny of two small, • brown people." This it faithfully does, showing them building a house, setting a tiger-trap, planting rice, suffering a drought, making a dam, riding an elephant in a teak forest, buying a buffalo and reaping only enough rice to make two rice puddings. There is something rather magnificent about the simplicity of it all, the dependence of man upon his ability, plus one knife, to conquer the primaeval forces of nature, and the Siamese are such pretty smiling people that they make even their singing a pleasure to hear. And this is quite a feat ! Children will like this picture very much Mr. Jolson's singing is also a pleasure to hear, issuing though it does through the lips of Mr. Larry Parks who, as the ageing maestro, is singularly miscast. Continuity is all very well, but in this second edition of The Jolson Story it would have been wiser to have called upon an older man to interpret Mr. Jolson's older moments A little flour on the temples cannot disguise Mr. Parks' youthfulness.
Much as I love to hear Sonny Boy once again, and interested as I am in the story of Mr. Jolson's retirement from show business, his marriage to a nurse and his eventual re-emergence as a top enter- tainer, I must confess I found this film immensely boring. It is sentimental, one might say even treacly, and zealous as Mr. Parks is in posturing away in the approved Jolson style, he is not our Al and should, I think, give up trying to be. Miss Barbara Hale is nice as the wife-cum-nurse, and Mr. Ludwig Donath as the hero's father whimsies about effectively, if embarrassingly ; but oi the whole I can safely say this a waste of talent in a graveyard of ideas.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
