THE CINEMA
Victory, though based on the story by Conrad, is no more successful and no less embarrassing than the vast majority of American pictures which are set in the tropics. Hollywood's method of treating the tropics is to underline everything three times and smother the whole in treacle. Victory opens with a seedy hotel in the Malay Archipelago, where all the characters, except the hero and heroine (Mr. Fredric March and Miss Betty Field), are grotesque caricatures, both in appearance and behaviour, but without that slickness of line, that exact orienta- tion, which caricature requires. From this circus of phoney monsters, redolent of old-fashioned vice, we move on to a desert island—a reallittle Garden of Eden—and wait for the snakes, who duly arrive in the shape of Sir Cedric Hardwicke attended by two plug-uglies, Mr. Jerome Cowan and Mr. Lionel Royce. These snakes are very ham, but they give an opportunity to the hero to fight a moral battle with himself, and so vindicate the title of the picture. All three snakes are killed, Mr. March, cured of his Timonesque misanthropy, is left in the arms of Miss Field (who, while looking like a schoolgirl with a crush on her housemistress, has just stabbed a man in the back), and a stray Chinese servant reappears to pick up the furniture.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith was directed by Mr. Hitchcock, but no one would guess it; it is a very conventional Hollywood light comedy, not so good as many that have gone before it. Both of the stars—Mr. Robert Montgomery and Miss Carole Lombard —have shown themselves adepts in this genre, but this time the action drags ; I found myself thinking nostalgically of My Man Godfrey, where Miss Lombard, playing opposite Mr. William Powell, got pretty near the zenith of zany sex-appeal and high- ball farce, compared with which her latest performance is flat. Mr. Montgomery, who rarely (if ever?) throws away a part; is here a good deal the more amusing of the two.
There are, it must be admitted, some very funny scenes, e.g., when husband and wife revisit, in a mood of romance, one of the haunts of their courtship, a little Italian café which has since changed hands and become a joint for the unshaven; in 'spite of this they nobly attempt to revive old times, have a table carried into the street, where they are stared at by Medusa-like street-arabs, and are served with a soup which is refused even by the cat ; the cat is sitting on the table. But perhaps we are getting a little tired of these high-life marital whimsies, where the husbands and wives have infinite leisure to throw tantrums and bottles, and sulk, and be reconciled, and start all over again
Previous page
