THE CINEMA
"The Pride of the Yankees." At the Gaumont. March of Time." At the Empire.--,, Panama Hattie." At the Regal.
IF we must be sentimental in our war-time films, let us by all means be sentimental about the sporting spectacles which once contributed so much to the texture of metropolitan life. That was in the days when trains were crowded not with soldiers, but with beribboned celebrants of victory in a ball game, and when millions would listen with bated breath at 6 o'clock, not for news from Montgomery in Libya, but for word of Bastin and Alec James and how the battle went at Wembley. Nowadays it is easy to forget how much our national sense of values has changed. For any who may be tempted to believe that the change is for the better, here is a film of sporting New York which will bring tears to the eyes of even those solemn citizens who do not recognise the rubber ball as a major symbol of the twentieth century. The Pride of the Yankees is about baseball and not football, and for Tottenham and 1-lighbury we must substitute Brooklyn and the 'Bronx ; but the ideologies are identical, Jnd show that for today's audiences senti- mentalism about sport (with its sharp pre-war images) is welcome as sentimentalism about war is suspect. The Pride of the Yankees is the life-story of Lou Gehrig, who rivals Babe Ruth as the New York Yankees' most famous player and whose career was brought to an
untimely end by infantile paralysis. The climax of the film is a great ceremony in the Yankee Stadium, where before sixty thousand
spectators Gehrig (Gary Cooper) is presented with trophies from the whole nation and, after listening to speeches of appreciation from the Mayor of New York and from other national figures and after speaking into the microphones his own broken-voiced tributes to his parents, his wife, his public and the great players who have been his colleagues, he limps across the arena to the dressing-room, a dwindling bowed figure finally lost to sight under the terraces.
The emotional pitch of this scene is typical of the film and shamefully effective. There are, however, many moments earlier in the story with a more everyday flavour, and the intimate foreground details of the portrayal are as telling as the background of packed stadiums eager to leap up and roar out their praise of a sensational home run. There is Gehrig's first. shy arrival in the Yankees' dressing-room when the "new boy" is ignored in the friendliest possible way by his colleagues-to-be ; there are domestic excite- ments in New Rochelle with wife and immigrant mother quarrelling over wall-paper ; there is horse-play in the team's railway coach with Babe Ruth (the "Sultan of Swat ") appearing as himself and dominating his colleagues with brawn rather than brain ; there are the curiously parasitic sports-writers who make a living by reporting the personal misadventures as well as the public triumphs of these gladiators and who are even to be found sharing the Florida sun with them in the out-of-season months. To balance the expert discussions in barber's-shop and shoeshine-parlour culminating each Saturday afternoon in surging streams of spectators crossing the
hot concrete approaches to the stadium, we would perhaps have enjoyed a little more technical detail about the game itself. The
film is, however, more concerned with Gehrig's personality than with his professional skill, and Sam Wood's direction is so impeccable and the performances of Mr. Cooper and of Teresa Wright as his wife are so good that we can scarcely complain. What a relief it is to find that Gary Cooper's genius for portraying untutored wit and wisdom and all the agonies of strong men deeply moved has not been finally ruined by his recent excursions into social problems under the guidance of Mr. Frank Capra. As a baseball player, Mr. Cooper is much more convincing than as any of the recent manifestations of "Mr. Deeds," that curious personification of senti- mental sociology.
March of Time's latest release, The Fighting French, is topical in spirit if somewhat out-of-date as to facts. It was made before
the invasion of North Africa, but it is a salutary experience to be reminded of the long night of persecution and shame which preceded the dawn of new hope for France. It is good to be reminded, too, of the identity of our friends and foes when the issues were still in the balance. New scenes from New Caledonia and French Equatorial Africa' together with a valuable library " find " in the shape of a shot of General de Gaulle standing by his tank in his earlier and less famous days are supplemented by scenes of demo- cratic resistance to Fascism, which, though taken from a pre-war
film of Renoir's, can well be used to illustrate today's anti-Nazi activity. The Fighting French has recaptured the warmth of feeling which gave March of Time its original character, and for this we must no doubt thank Richard de Rochemont, who assembled the material and whose love of France shines clearly from his work.
Panama Hattie is a musical film worth seeing for three reasons: To the precise ballroom grace of Veloz and Yolanda and the almost unbelievably eccentric dancing of the Berry Brothers is added a
characteristic contribution by that amazing comedy singer, Virginia O'Brien, who has evolved a technique of gesture and expression quite
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