THE CINEMA
" When the Bough Breaks." (Gaumont, Marble Arch Pavilion).—"I Walk Alone." (Plaza).
When the Bough Breaks is about mothers ; about childless women who are natural mothers, women who have motherhood thrust upon them and just plain mothers. This picture also deals with child- adoption and the disasters that may occur unless one fills up the necessary forms in triplicate. Although this film runs on familiar lines hung with tiny garments which are occasionally taken down and hugged to the bosom, it is not laver-sentimental and its sincerity is unquestionable. Miss Patricia Roc is the poor girl who gives her child to Miss Rosamund John who is rich, and then, after a lapse of eight years, wants him back again, and, what is more, owing to the vagueness of the initial transaction, gets him back again. The child, nurtured in the country and remembering only the love and kindness shown him by Mummy John, hates Mummy Roc's grocery shop and hates Mummy Roc too, so in the end Roc yields to John and the boy returns to his foster mother. In the meantime Miss Roc has married Mr. Bill Owen, and in the final shot we see them with another child, one William plus teaspoon—theirs.
It takes all sorts to make a mother, of course, but neither Miss Roc nor Miss John strikes one as being prominently maternal types, although both of them Fight like tigers for, and smile wistfully at, the child they so heedlessly kick around. There is nothing organically wrong with this film, and yet it seems weak and ineffective. * * * *
We have now got so used to the psychological thriller that a plain common or garden gangster film with people shooting each other without first laying bare their souls seems extraordinarily old- fashioned. I Walk Alone is such a film, and circles rather threaten- ingly round the lives of an ex-convict, a double-crossing night-club proprietor, a crooner and some boys called Skinner, Tiger and Heinz. Frankly it is not worth a visit. Messrs. Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Wendell Corey do their best to instil life into their stereotyped parts, but somehow I have ceased to believe in gangsters, unless, that is to say, they have inhibitions or are the
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