Cinema
THE KING'S THIEF. (Ritz.)-THE VIRGIN 'QUEEN. (Carlton.)--THE TROUBLE SHOOTER. (Odeon.) IT is curious that with such vast resources at its command the cinema industry is rarely capable of producing an historical film that is not both bad and funny. This week there are two films which illustrate, as succinctly as any text-book, how and how not to handle English history. From a profound study of The King's Thief and The Virgin Queen the following ex- quisitely simple facts emerge: first, that it is a good thing to employ actors who can ade- quately represent the characters allotted them, and second, that it is vital to have writers with a flair for ye olde. Anything below the best in acting or writing is fatal, for cherish our history as we may, we are quick to find it ridiculous. A couple of modern words and a comic hat and we are undone. True, The King's Thief is concerned with a period in our history, the reign of Charles II, when costumes and man- ners were designed on somewhat hilarious lines. True again, the film does not pretend to be anything more than an adventure story, a tale of treason and plot with its attendant balderdash. Even so it is supremely idiotic. Edmund Purdom is, of course, nicely athletic and Ann Blyth very pretty, but search high, search low, it would be hard to find an actor less suited to the part of a seventeenth-century villain than David Niven, and even ten little spaniels and a tiny moustache must needs fail to turn George Sanders into Charles. Such foolish casting. Faced with these very crossed stars, heavily wigged, plumed, and speaking an extraordinary language which flits through the centuries, one is immediately reminded of a dozen music-hall sketches, and the film, for all its rumbustious fights, its panting efforts to excite, becomes a parody of a parody. All very fine as a joke, but it was not so intended.
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The Virgin Queen, on the other hand, has been manufactured with an eye to history as well as commerce. Its stars, Bette Davis, Richard Todd, Herbert Marshall and Joan Collins, are physically and vocally suited to their parts; its script, by Harry Brown and Mindret Lord, is remarkably plausible; its director, Henry Koster, has brilliantly withheld any temptation to ,overdress. or exaggerate the customs of the times. The magnetism of Miss Davis is, of course, without parallel, and her portrait of the ageing queen, brusque, witty, shrewd, opinionated, bad-tempered and some- how heartbreakingly touching—rather like a potpourri of Lady Astor, Gilbert Harding and Queen Victoria—compels unqualified admira- tion. The movements of her hands alone speak volumes. This, like all other of Miss Davis's performances, has to be seen. Richard Todd's Raleigh is more soldier than poet, manly, up- right, and as swift as his sovereign to stand no nonsense from anyone. He even lays his cloak in the puddle without subservience; it just seems the sensible thing to do. He is excellent, as indeed is the whole picture.
The Trouble Shooter is a black-and-white Western with Robert Mitchum as a man whose job it is to go from one gang-ridden town to another, 'taming' it single-handed. This, in plain terms, means that he shoots dead all the unpleasant people, leaving the pleasant ones, who had not the guts to do it themselves, in the ascendancy. Well directed by Richard Wilson, this film goes in strongly ,for suspense, the general tautness of things being accentu- ated by Mr. Mitchum's inscrutable counten- ance, and a score, uncredited, which harps upon the nerves.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
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