Cinema DEATH OF A CYCLIST. (Academy.)—WomAN OF THE RIVER. (Leicester
Square Theatre.) —THE BOLD AND THE BRAVE. (London Pavilion.)—THE RACK. (Rialto.) FOR foreign eyes, ears and understandings the flavour of a country is probably reproduced in its films more strikingly and acceptably than in any other art form; certainly through them it can hope to reach its widest public. For sociological reasons, then, quite apart from their artistic merits, we are lucky to have films from Spain—that remotest, least understood, at present most fashionable country of Western Europe—at last beginning to trickle through to us. Death of a Cyclist would be an exciting experience wherever it came from : Juan ' Bardem's bold, abrupt, elliptical direction, bordering now on the melodramatic, now on the lyrical; his speed, the personal and almost private way he hustles you along, giving a hint, an aside, an echo you can pick up or miss, as you like; his use of contrast within contrast, of formal and grotesque together. of stillness and vivacity, desolation and move- ment; the violence of his parallels when he cuts from the twitter of the canasta-player to the raucous shouts of the slum women, from the exquisite child bridesmaids to the games of the little tenement girls, from the murdered lover to the almost identical face of the murderess's waiting husband: all these stamp the film with a rare personality and vigour. But as interest- ing as the individual flavour of the director is the more general flavour of Spain it brings with it : unemphatically, without local colour, em- phasising similarities with rather than differ- ences from other societies, it still manages to bring a whiff of the country as unmistakable as the smell of cooking or the nasal rhythm of street cries. Yet the story might have taken place anywhere: a rich woman and her lover run down a cyclist on a deserted road and, fearing discovery and explanations, leave him to die; suspicions, coincidencry above all con- science, catch up with them and the circle of influence widens till the only solution can come through confession. The lover, repentant, is
run down by his mistress, who, tearing back to her husband down the same deserted road, swerves over a bridge when she meets a cyclist; and he, in his turn, takes one look at her body, gets on his bicycle and pedals madly away. This melancholy circular tale is most beautifully acted out by Lucia Bose, an Italian who manages to look and behave like a Span- iard, and gives the part of the spoilt young society woman extraordinary depth and even tenderness almost entirely on account of her appearance—for she looks immensely young, fragile, and even childish, with that curious simplicity of face and manner, that rather voluptuous innocence of expression, so much admired in Spain; and by Alberto Closas, at first sight merely the typical stoutish, near- middle-aged Spaniard, whose strange physical resemblance to the man who plays the husband cannot surely be accidental, at second sight an actor wonderfully well able to conjure from within the good man corrupted by a corrupt society, the eternal Latin intellectual depending for advancement on outside influence.
Far behind this, but second best of the week, is another Latin film, with Moravia, of all people, part-author of its outrageously senti- mental story. Mario Soldati. though, seems more at home as director and part-scriptwriter, for no one knows better how to present Italy for painless foreign consumption, and Woman of the River, the tale of a peasant-girl betrayed, is clearly intended (with who knows how much tongue-in-cheek) for abroad. It has some mag- nificent riverside scenery, a few pleasant pot- shots at the Italian way of life, a lot of (surely) satirical cheesecake, and an almost frenetically bouncy Sofia Loren tossing her ginger locks on the banks of the Po; it has also a genuinely touching if painful 20 minutes at the end dur- ing which an enchanting red-headed child is lost, searched for, found drowned among the reeds, brOught home, bewailed, and buried, and Miss Loren is given the first chance I ever saw her take of acting from the heart—a thing she rather surprisingly manages.
The Bold and the Brave, about three Ameri- can soldiers fighting in Italy, their loves, hates and inhibitions—mostly these—is a likeable though superficial film with some excellent though almost embarrassingly naturalistic act- ing from Mickey Rooney. good support from Wendell Corey and Don Taylor as his two army buddies, and choppy, boyish, energetic direction from Lewis R. Foster. Wendell Corey appears again in The Rack, a serious examina- tion, amid floods of masculine tears and psychological jargon, of the reasons for a hero's treason in Korea. Paul Newman, with just the right current decadence, gives conviction to the hero; poor Walter Pidgeon is required to cry, and not much else.
Previous page
