CONTEMPORARY ARTS
CINEMA
The Star. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—April in Paris. (Warner.) —Above and Beyond. (Empire.) Miss Berms DAVIS, as far as I am concerned, can do no wrong; but in-her latest film, The Star, she portrays a character so infinitely more contemptible than pitiable that it is difficult to find sufficient patience with which to sit and admire her. Undoubtedly there is something tragic about a once successful actress refusing to believe that her day is done, clinging to her Oscar as to a lifebelt and suffering bitter misery rather than face the facts; but, while appreciating her tragedy, one cannot help being irritatedly aware of her stupidity. A large number of people are stupid. Miss Davis is not. Her very eyelashes reek of intelligence, and she has her work cut out to persuade one that she could behave with such wild, tempestuous, uninhibited emotionalism as this. Of course she gets away with it, making scenes, weeping, drinking with splendid abandon, and as always she has that hypnotic power which draws one's every sense towards her. There has never been a better screen actress—of that I am convinced—and even when consistently self-pitying as she is here she pierces the opaqueness of this boring form of indulgence with shafts of brilliance. The film is very well directed by Mr. Stuart Heisler, and Mr. Sterling Hayden gives a good performance as the plumber-cum-marine engineer with whom the heroine so improbably finds her "womanhood" at the end. Good too is Miss Natalie Wood as her daughter. Indeed, were it not for the fact that the obsession of a woman for her unimportant self grates on the nerves and makes the palms itch to slap, this would be an admirable film. Technically and histrionically it ts this now, and for the tolerant well worth seeing.
And so is April in Paris, an airy musical starring Miss Doris Day and Mr. Ray Bolger, two people who, in spite of the latter's resemblance to Mr. Buster Keaton, cannot be accused of morbidity. The film, directed by Mr. David Butler, is written by Messrs. Jack Rose and Melville Shavelson, gentlemen with an unusually witty turn of pen, so that the anticipated arid wastes between numbers are fresh and green here, and often, it may be added, funny. M. Claude Dauphin, a newcomer to Hollywood, brings a full quota of Gallic charm to this frivolity, and carries out his director's Rene-Clair-inspired instructions with panache.- Singing the theme- song in a freezing windy Paris, both he and Miss Day are delightful. Apart from this and a gay if over-lengthy number in the kitchens of a transatlantic liner, there is little noteworthy on the musical side, the accent, for once, being on words; yet the sum-total adds up to a trill. Above and Beyond is about the man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, about how he came to do it and what he thought about before, during and after this cataclysmic enterprise. Mr. Robert Taylor plays the part of Colonel Tibbets with excellent restraint, a restraint matched for the most part by the film itself. Threatened at times with engulfment by domestic emotions, by a tearful and determinedly obtuse Miss Eleanor Parker, it ploughs steadily through the waves, and retains, in all matters of importance, an air of responsibility. The development of the atom bomb, the training necessary for its despatch and, the enforced secrecy en- shrouding the project are illustrated in a manner befitting so serious a subject, and there is no attempt to glamorise, no exploiting of the moral issues involved. Mr. Taylor is a man labouring under an intolerable strain, but only rarely does he indulge in a theatrical outburst. For the rest he is quiet and determined and exhausted, understating his case most effectively. The film is directed by Mr. Norman Panama, a trifle on the slow side perhaps, but then the theme is not one to encourage a fleet-footed approach. Its weight,
Previous page
