THE CINEMA
" Give us This Day." (Odeon.)
THIS is a very strange picture, and it leaves one with a numbet of impressions so ill-attuned to each other that it is hard to judge it as an harmonious whole. The story is taken from a novel called Christ in Concrete by Pietro de Donato, arid it concerns an Italian bricklayer living in Brooklyn in the mos. This man, with golden dreams of the future, persuades an Italian girl, whom he has never seen, to leave her native Italy and come to America to marry him, promising her her heart's desire, a house of her own. Being far too poor to implement his promise, he merely hires one for the honeymoon and then takes his bitterly disillusioned wife back to a tenement room. Only fifty-five weeks of rigorous saving and the house will be theirs. From then on their life together is one long
struggle against adversity ; children, illness, unemployment use up all their savings. The bricklayer, in despair, gets work as a foreman on a building job that he knows will endanger his fellow workmen's lives, and the walls collapse and he himself meets death by being stuck in a deep hole with liquid cement slowly pouring into it until he is buried. His wife is awarded damages, enough money to buy the house of which they dreamed.
Mr. Edward Dmytryk is a fine director, a lover of shadows and symbolic gfoupings, a master at creating memorable atmospheres, and that he succeeds here is a great achievement ; for it is rarely that a director has to deal with such a peculiar script. The screen- play is by Mr. Ben Barzman; and I do not know if he culled his dialogue from the novel that he was adapting, or whether he invented it himself ; but one thing is certain, no words such as these ever fell from the lips of Brooklyn bricklayers. Of a slightly Biblical flavour, they are as improbable as they are lovely to hear. The characters, too, mystical and humourless, seem to be set in a parable, and yet emerge as living beings. In particular Miss Padovani is, like so many Italian actresses, very wonderful, disregarding the usual attributes of a star in favour of acting. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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