CONTEMPORARY ARTS •
CINEMA
Five Fingers. (Leicester Square.)—Tall Headlines. (Gaumont.)--- Singin' In the Rain. (Empire.) Operation Cicero, Mr. L. C. Moyzisch's book relating the incredible but as yet unrefuted tale of the war-time activities of our Ambassador's Albanian valet in Turkey—a gentleman's gentleman turned spy out of love for spondulics rather than out of spite for England—has been adapted, with certain additional flourishes, into a highly entertaining film. Mr. James Mason's somewhat overpowering personality has been suitably folded and pressed into the suave creases of the perfect servant, and he gives an admirable performance throughout.
Cicero—this was the name allotted him bythe Germans—sold thirty-five top secrets for £130,000 by the simple Process of taking the documents out of the Ambassador's safe, laying them on a chair, photographing them and putting them back agaip. The entrancing thing about this incomparably successful course of espionage is that, in spite of repeated proofs, the Germans persisted in believing they were being trapped. The secrets were so " top," involved political and military matters of so important a nature, that they were dis- counted as " plants " and never once acted upon. The British, dear trusting fellows, cannot be said either, as far as this film is concerned, to be waving the flag very intelligently, but in the end Mr. Michael Rennie, as a counter-agent, nearly, after 'laying one of the most hackneyed traps ever designed for thieves, gets his man.
In a film which is blessed with an amusing, sardonic script there is, in addition to Mr. Mason's compelling performance, some -enchanting acting by Mlle Danielle Darrieux as an impoverished countess, a beautifully etched miniature of Von Papen by Mr. John Wengraf and Mr. Joseph -Mankiewicz's ever imaginative direction enhanced by the mysteries of Ankara. I enjoyed this film enor- mously.
• • • Tall Headlines, also adapted from a book, this time a novel by Miss Audrey Erskine Lindop, is not so- enjoyable. Granted, it does not set out to be—not in the usual meaning of the word—for it concerns itself with the fortunes of an ordinary middle-class family, the eldest son of which has just been hanged for murder. Enjoyment, however, though it is usually identified with laughter, can be reaped in many unlikely fields, including those sowed with suburbia's secret tragedies. In Tall Headlines, alas, it flowers but rarely. Here the Lives of five people are ruined by the ghost of one man : Miss Flora Robson and Mr. Andre Morell, his parents ; Mr. Michael-Denison and Miss Jane Hylton, his brother and sister ; Miss Mai Zetterling, his sister-in-law—all obsessed, hunted, haunted and, in Mr. Denison's case, slightly crazed by the memory of a noose. Although one feels at the back of one's heart a great sympathy for these wretched people, somehow in every situation the film fails to con- vince. Acted with sincerity, it contrives to be unintentionally funny at times. Mr. Terence Young's direction is on the scrappy side, and he is too fond, for my liking, of " special effects."
• Mr. Gene Kelly has directed and stars in a fine foolish musical, which aims some playfully poisoned arrows at the nineteen-t'.. nties. His story is centred on that dire moment when the talkie took over from the silent picture, and when erstwhile stars were found to have voices like saws. As the dumb blonde with the nasal twang, Miss Jean Hagen is a ravir, and I would especially commend to you the sequence in which, in her first talkie—a saga of the French Revolu- tion—every kiss sounds like a bomb and the movement of pearls on Madame's neck like shrapnel. The clothes are ludicrous and the tunes old, yet Mr. Kelly manages to weld them into dance numbers that are pleasing to the eye and ear. Moulded in a spirit of mockery, this film makes a refreshing change from the normal run of musicals, carrying in its coloured bosom not one seed of sentimentality, and evidently enjoying its brief and thoroughly destructive hour.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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