THE CINEMA
The Search." (Ritz.)—"Une Si Jolla Petite Plage." (Rialto.) "Little Women." (Empire.) The Search is a dramatic appeal in semi-documentary form for the displaced children of Europe, and it has, among other qualities, the virtue of being acted by an international team, each member of which adheres strictly to his or her mother tongue. Mr. Montgomery Clift and Miss Aline McMahon give outstanding performances as American members of U.N.R.R.A. ; Mdme. Jarmila Novotna, who plays the part of a mother searching for her little son, is a Czech, and so is the nine-year-old boy, Ivan Jandl. The producer, Mr. Wechsler, is a Swiss, the director, Mr. Fred Zinneman, American, and the children, whose film this is, come from all the oppressed countries of Europe. That these herds of little old men and women, quiet as the graves their parents for the most part occupy, their faces hollow with fatigue, their eyes submissively blank—that these waifs branded with the numberings of concentration camps and with other secret scars too awful to contemplate are children makes the incredulous heart wish to stop beating. That the smell of an exhaust pipe seeping through the floorboards of a lorry should mean nothing but the gas chamber, that all uniforms should be mistrusted, bread be hoarded automatically and laughter be as unknown as hope are crosses that the German nation will surely have to bear to eternity. The adult part of the film is, perhaps, a little contrived, but in a way this is merciful as it helps one to pretend—and how desperately one wants to pretend—that this is, after all, just a film.
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Une Si Tolle Petite Plage, a title which conjures up a picture of love under striped umbrellas, apéritifs, and moonlight bathes, is, on the contrary, of a melancholy so profound, so unrelieved as to shroud the beholder in a mist of misery. M. Gerard Philipe, who acted with such beautiful sensitiveness in Le Diable au Corps, plays the part of a youth who, having been decoyed by a passing Parisian actress from the plage hotel where he worked, returns in winter to visit the scene of his childhood, having, the previous day, murdered his mistress for no absolutely dear reason.
Nearly the whole film is devoted to revisiting the scene with him ; sea in rain, beach in rain, roads in rain, rain looked at from hotel window, rain watched from doorways, chambermaid crossing street in rain, relentless wetness everywhere. As a study in atmo- sphere this film is unsurpassed, and M. Yves Allegrct has accen- tuated the mournfulness of it all by summoning to his aid the clanging shutter and the squeaking sign and the whine of the wind. M. Philipe promenades slowly and in great mental agony backwards and forwards across the screen, and the camera lingers long and lovingly on his dripping figure ; it waits brooding and sullen in every moist corner ; it loiters, scarcely breathing, about the dampened dunes. We are offered no flashbacks ; no glamorous actress appears out of the past to seduce a younger hero. In fact, practically nothing happens at all except a little desultory conversation perfectly attuned to the weather and long, long walks in the rain. I have a shrewd idea that from a directional point of view this film is a great achievement, but unfortunately it is too realistic to be entertaining.
Louisa May Alcott's novel, Little Women, the very thought of which brings back the warm smell of a flannel nightgown hung over a nursery fender, has been adapted for the screen once again, this time in Technicolor, and with Miss June Allyson as Jo, Miss Elizabeth Taylor as Amy, Miss Margaret O'Brien as Beth and Miss Janet Leigh as Meg—the four beautiful daughters of the slightly nondescript Marmce, played here by Miss Mary Astor. That the girls are all apparently of the same age is of little consequence, and the unfolding of their simple leisurely lives, so deliciously unviolent and unatomic, through white winters and green springs and red autumns to their appointed ends makes for peaceful, if occasionally soporific, entertainment. Mr. Mervyn LeRoy both produced and directed this picture ; well, but not quite quickly enough.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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