CINEMA
Full House. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Pat and Mike. (Empire.) 0. HENRY was one of the first story-tellers of all time, and it is fitting that Hollywood, in making five of his stories into an omnibus film, Frill House, should have placed at their disposal five of its best directors and a dozen of its more talented players. Each of these short films is an unqualified success, presenting the author's versatility, wit and unabashed sentimentality in carefully-balanced dollops, and blending the whole into as satisfying an entertainment as anyone Could wish.
The Cop and the Anthem, directed by Mr. Henry Koster, gives us Mr. Charles Laughton as the gentleman tramp who vainly endeavours to get himself arrested so that he can spend a warm winter in gaol. Cheerfully unctuous, in a tight frock-coat and with unshaven chin, Mr. Laughton slips this part about his globular person like a greased glove, setting such a high standard, lighting so bright a light that one fears for the future. These fears are groundless. Following blade- bright after him comes Mr. Henry Hathaway's The Clarion Call, one of 0. Henry's less plausible stories with the twisted tail, but here made acceptable by the vigorous acting of Messrs. Richard Widmark and Dale Robertson. As the murderer who is owed money by the policeman, Mr. Widmark gives his usual superb rendering of moronic savagery, a role of which he must be heartily sick, but in which he has no rival. His mirthless laugh must needs freeze a hyena in its tracks.
The Last Leaf, in which a sick woman believes she will die when the vine opposite her window is bare, is frankly glucose, but Mr. Gregory Ratoff, as the artist who dupes her by painting a leaf on the wall, and the Misses Ann Baxter and Jean Peters manage beaUtifully to make the sweetness palatable, Miss Peters in particular salting the fantasy with realistic touches. Mr. Jean Negulesco is responsible for the direction of this story, and he handles its fragility with loving care.
Messrs. Fred Allen and Oscar Levant, battling with an odious little boy they have kidnapped, seem a trifle obvious and blatant in their humour in The Ransom of Red Chief, directed by Mr. Howard Hawkes, but it is good for us perhaps to have our tender hearts rested awhile before they meet Mr. Farley Granger and Miss Jeanne Crain in The Gift of the Magi. This final story, one of 0. Henry's most famous, is directed by Mr. Henry King, and it is so enchanting and so touching that one wants to take it home and look after it forever.
* * * * Baseball, football and boxing have often been called .upon to provide the background for films, but never, I think, golf and tennis, and it is certainly refreshing, at any rate for the athletically minded, to have a heroine who can beat Mrs. Babe Zaharias in the morning and Miss Alice Marble in the afternoon. That this heroine should be Miss Katherine Hepburn makes the mouth droop open with wonder ; for she is superlatively efficient, supremely stylish whether driving from the fourth or making Miss Gussie Moran run the frills off her panties. When, one wonders, has she found time to act ? Taken .in hand by a sports-promoter, Mr. Spencer Tracy, Miss Hepburn who, up to now, has been playing games for the fun of them, Is groomed by him for athletic stardom, thereby losing everything that makes life worth living. The American approach to sport, that of a priest to his vows, is here made painfully patent, Miss Hepburn dedicating every conscious minute to the cult of the ball. However, between chip shots she and Mr. Tracy are immensely agreeable in their happy hardboiled way ; the script is gay and friendly, Mr. George Cukor 's direction unerring, and there is a lively caricature of a dumb boxer by Mr. Aldo Ray. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
