THE CINEMA
"The Maltese Falcon." At the Regal.—" Roxie Hart." At the Odeon.
WHAT a fine actor is Humphrey Bogart. Ever since he first made his mark in the Petrified Forest—tossing into the terror-charged atmosphere of a shack in the Arizona desert a quiet, pitiless account of his wasted gangster life-.--he has been contributing flesh, blood and backbone to the lay-figures of the screen. The Maltese Falcon is not outstandingly well scripted, and young John Huston's direc- tion is as yet scarcely comparable with the mastery of Hitchcock in his current Saboteur, nor with Frank Tuttle's superbly intelligent This Gun for Hire. Yet the Dashiell Hammett thriller takes high place in the phenomenal batch of good melodramas we are now enjoying, and it owes the distinction almost entirely to Mr. Bogart (and to some excellent casting in the supporting parts). Walter Huston's son can handle his actors like an old-timer, but his use of " atm3spheric " music and exaggerated low-angle shots to empha- size the sinister character of the proceedings is tawdry gilt on the lily. These embellishments do more to hinder than to help Mr. Bogart's purpose, which is to present to us for the first time in the history of stage or screen a private detective who is not a paragon of the social virtues, but a man making a precarious living in a moral atmosphere which could scarcely fail to infect a saint. Mr. Bogart is no high-society, elegant-turned policeman. Between his vaguely sordid office and his vaguely sordid home he makes his grimly determined way in and out of situations where he is as likely to fall victim to the police as are the crooks he alternately serves or pursues. He is not a happy man; but he likes women, he likes money and he likes to outsmart people, and in all three directions he does well enough to get along. The pursuit of the fabulous jewels of the Maltese Falcon is always a little too romantic for his practical world, but one of the three crooks concerned has shot his partner, and if you're a private detective and someone shoots your partner it's bad for business and you're expected to do something about it, he informs us cynically. So he holds off the impatient affection of the late partner's wife, and the competing love of the woman who shot him, long enough to hand over all guilty parties to the police. To have saved the murderess simply because he happened temporarily to be in love with her would have been bad for business too. So the undemonstrative detective, with the rare and unexpectedly boyish smile, goes back alone to his sad, sordid little world. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are suave villains in the politely vicious tradition, and Mary Astor contributes a con- vincing portrayal of a violent and a moral beauty who could not fail to impress a detective accustomed to less exotic company.
Roxie Hart is about the bad old Chicago days, when a pretty actress lucky enough to be accused of murder was well on her way to fame and fortune. Supported by a beautifully satirical perform- ance by Adolphe Menjou as her "mouthpiece," Ginger Rogers moves with delightful gusto througg all the mad motions of a cause célèbre become farce. The jail is transformed into a banquet- ing hall at which the accused dancer entertains the Press, and endeavours, without success, to put a curb of gentility and remorse on her natural inclination to break into the contortions of the "black-bottom." On trial for her life, Roxie becomes the centre of a series of emotional tableaux with judge, counsel, jury and police always alert to leap within range of the Press cameras. It is a sober- ing thougnt that only in time of war could we be so comfortably
gay about murder and legal corruption. EDGAR ANSTEY.
Previous page
