CINEMA
The Glass Wall. (London Pavilion.)—She's Back on Broadway. (Tivoli and Astoria.)
IN The Glass Wall Hollywood takes a heavy thwack at the U.S. immigration laws and, as is so often the way when the reformatory spirit is at large, overstates its case for the plaintiff. From the time when Vittorio Gassman as a displaced person who has been in all the concentration camps and lost all his family and all his fingernails jumps ship, until he suicidally teeters on the roof of the United Nations building, the entire police force of New York, it appears, is hounding him. As he reels or races about the city Mr. Gassman accumulates such a weight of wounds and misery and is so constantly winding himself round lamp-posts and lurching in and out of door- ways I feel any village policeman would pick him up in five minutes. In his desperate efforts to find a clarinet player called Tom whose life he saved in the war and without whose references Mr. Gassman cannot place legal foot on land, he encounters a down-and-out girl, Gloria Grahame, and a burlesque dancer, Robin Raymond, whose efforts to assist him prove, like so many good intentions, disastrous. Poor Mr. Gassman, a fine sensitive actor and one of the best looking men I have ever seen, cannot quite compete with the situations shovelled on to him, for this film, though it is thoughtfully directed by Maxwell Shane, is overburdened with righteous indignation. Immigration laws cannot be unreservedly humane, and although they may occasionally be instruments of tragedy, on the whole the U.S. variety seems pretty reasonable and fair. The hero's impas- sioned speech to the empty air of the UNO conference chamber as he goes on his way to its roof, knocks on the heart but leaves the head cool, for with the best will in the world a country cannot gather everybody who has a sad story and no money unto its bosom. This cry of suffering, though deeply sincere, is so loud and protracted it has the effect of making one slightly impatient. Just half of Mr. Gassman's troubles would have been acceptable : the lot are not.
As a musical She's Back on Broadway is not, perhaps, of the highest order, yet if the singing and dancing fail to hit the target, the script, by Orin Jannings, is far above the average for this type of entertain- ment. The heroine is Virginia Mayo who plays the part of a Holly- wood film star on the skids trying to make a come-back on the New York stage. From the neck upwards Miss Mayo is singularly unexpressive but there is a lot of her left to bring home the old, old message. The hero, Steve Cochran, is a producer who not only hates Miss Mayo for having left a show of his six years back, but also with a hurt heart hidden in layers of cynicism, loves her, and he gives an extremely good interpretation of an extremely tiresome young man. Egotistical, uncouth, violently objectionable, he holds the screen with consummate assurance and manages, in spite of the baleful character he portrays, to arouse sympathy. Frank Lovejoy, Patrice Wymore and Gene Nelson give solid support. That a great deal of work is put into the making of a Broadway musical comedy is a factor which is usually brushed aside, but here, though the characters may be of stock size and patented pattern they do really get down to the job. Gordon Douglas, the film's director, keeps them longer at rehearsals than he does at performances and he has one audition scene which is splendidly funny.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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