Cinema
MARCELINO. (Academy.)—LovE Is A MAW' SPLENDOURED THING. (Carlton.) --- 1:11E GIRL Rusti. (Plaza.)—How TO BE VI-16 VERY POPULAR. (Rialto.) Tins has been a melancholy week in the cinema, a week when hope, always in I e fettle on Monday morning, had turned to black despair by Wednesday. Only Marcelino victorious in keeping an almost unbearable ennui at bay. This is a Spanish film, another tea-jerking story of a little. boy and his miracle. Left as a babe on the threshold Of 3 monastery, this orphan child is brought up the monks, and at the age of five, with huge eyes and a wicked smile, he rules the refectory Lonely for mother-love and for the aril' panionship of children, he one day trespasses into a forbidden attic, where he finds a life-sii° crucifix. Thinking Jesus looks hungrY, ba brings Him bread, and the statue, come to I ifa accepts it and talks to him. As a reward for bis kindness Our Lord promises to grant the lc));
his dearest wish: a playfellow perhaps?
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Marcelino wants only one thing, to see his mother. 'And yours, too, of course,' he Os as a polite afterthought. And to soaring 01-sic and the sniffs of the audience this wish granted. Impossible not to be moved, for Ibe child, Pablito Calvo, is one of those treasures the cinema unearths from time to time, a swg cl. heart-breaking little boy who is a miracle in himself, and the film, simply directed I)) Ladislao Vajda, is bathed in gentleness.
The three other pictures on the agench there is a fourth, King's Rhapsody, starring Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn, but I have be spared this—make, when joined together, a gigantic wastage of celluloid. Each has it5 precious moments, little squares of 08101 patched into the yards of sleazy material; an not to be too destructive I will try to realeor
al
ber these. In Henry King's Love Is 49ss Splendoured Thing, in which Jennifer Jones a nurse and William Holden as an America° reporter make miscegenous love in ha°i)5' English, there are two happy features. One toMiss Jones herself, poised and persuasive, I other, played with impeccable integrity', i5 Hong Kong. In The Girl Rush, where Rosalind ' Russell, following up her huge stage sueens5 in My Sister Eileen, sketches in some sontrnird. dance routines while trying to get a ganiblInkl hotel started in Las Vegas, there ace. on I credit side, Hugh Martin's music and that °Ia friend of rather old people, Marion Lorlic. Her flutterings, which once caused the boards of many a London stage to squeak with Jul' are still delightful. Search as I may for sonic' thing loving to say about How to be r I/ ‘11 Very Popular, a romp with college studel3015/ and two semi-nude night-club girls, orie whom has been hypnotised, I find myself °/1 the edge of defeat. Nice to see Charles Cohn° again, and if you like smashing blondes tbd are Betty Grable and Sheree North. For part, I don't care how smashed they get.
VIRGINIA 0"..-
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