The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 19

AUGUST 27, 1950 The Sunday Herald Features. PAGE FIVE REVIEWS OF NEW FILMS IN SYDNEY One-Minwtte Micvictv And Tommy Trinder, as a "new chum" trying to be a stockman, is in it for the laughs. (Lyceum.) through whose penniless eyes the story is told a point which produces a curiously foolish situation towards the end. Indeed, there is far too much narrative. Watch for a charming little actress named Nancy Olson who has the role of a film script reader.

Stroheim, as a mad star's butler, is rather awkward and hammy throughout. (Prince Edward.) "Bitter Springs" Screenplay by W. F. Llpacomb ml M. Damschoiky.

from a alory by Ralph Smart; produced for Ealinc Studio, by Michael Bal-corn directed by Ralph Smart. "SUNSET BOULEVARD" (Prince Edward): Power-tut drama of a has-been movie queen, quite rich and road and dangerous, with a spectacular character study by Gloria Swanson. "BITTER SPRINGS" (Lyceum): Pleasant and refresh. inR story, with mild dramatic tension, about an Australian Brai-uig family trek to the Never-Never and its skirmishes with aborigines. "GUN CRAZY" (Civic): Well-made crime drama, fast and tense, about the hectic career of a boy and girl who are always on the run from hold-ups.

"LOyiSA" (State): Fairly entertaining treatment of the famdy-comedy routine has Spring Byington as a spry grand, mother and Edmund Gwenn and Charles Cob urn as her dashine suitors. 6 "ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD" (Mayfair): Disney's cartoon translation of stories by Washington Irving and Ken. elh Graname. "Toad" has charm; the "Ichabod" episode is somewhat heavy-handed.

film heroes just now), is the harassed pivot to a pair of family crises involving his widowed mother and her two rival suitors on the one hand, and, on the other, his teen-age daughter and her pretentiously intellectual boy-friend. The mother is Spring Byington, and her lovers are Edmund Gwenn, a sentimental grocer, and Charles Coburn, a dashing business tycoon of 65. They make their triangle much more amusing than it deserves to be, while Piper Laurie and Scotty Beckett, as the younger pair, are almost charming as film teen-agers go. But it would have been much more amusing if the script-writers had not worked on the simple assumption that love at 60 or 16 is funny in itself, and had not laboured the parallels between the grandmother's and the granddaughter's affairs quite so obviously. There is one scene that gives a hint of the kind of sly humour that might have distinguished the film: the seven-year-old son wanders through the empty house, reflecting maturely on the follies of bis elders, after the rest of the family have dashed off in a state of high hysteria to rescue the grandmother from a fate worse than death.

(State.) "Ichabod And Mr. "Sunset Boulevard? 7 Brackett. my Vilder. O. M.

Marshmsn. Ir produced for Bracked; directed by Billy Wilder. Norma Desmond William Hokirn joe oillis Erich ton Slrohcim Mai roa Marerluic Nancy Olson Betly Schsefcr a' Sheldrake Morlno lack Webb Artie Green Franklyn Farrtum Undertaker Cecil I. De Mllle. Hedda Hopper.

Baiter Kealoa, Anna Q. MIson, and H. B. Warner appear aa ibcmeclvea. 'TWERE will be lots of unresolved 1 arguments about the thoroughly spectacular performance given by Gloria Swanson as a has-been film tar, quite mad and quite rich and quite forgotten, in this powerful and frightening drama from Billy Wilder, the director who studied alcohol in "Lost Week-End" and now studies the greater vice of growing old hideously.

Some people will say that the remarkable central role of the "silent" star, who still lives with crazy delusions of her own greatness and grandeur, is really rather easy to act and no great test. Others will ask whether Gloria Swanson overacts a little tiresomely in places and whether she repeals herself too often in gesture and inflection. But there isn't a doubt that this performance, pulsing with intense and often ugly emotion, is one of the half-dozen most exciting and most complete character studies of the year. Unlike the central character who can never make a movie comeback after 20 years away from the screen Gloria Swanson, now 51, makes a comeback that is not merely a personal triumph but a remarkable demonstration of the tremendous range of acting that can be done with eyes and mouth things that were everything in movies before the "talkies." There are times when the character seems modelled on some gruesome spider. Other times it is all serpent.

In some sequences, as when the beam from some cinema projector catches the lineament of her queenly head. Miss Swanson makes her personality seem absolutely radio-active with pride and vanity, arrogance and megalomania. Yet there is much sympathy and poignance in the role. So pitiful is the pleading desperation in her efforts to browbeat a handsome young man into making love to her in a great, miserable, flamboyant bouse that is like a tomb for magnificently outdated junk. Wilder's direction evokes an oppressive atmosphere of musty decay and gnawing mental sickness.

He and the script intensify this brooding environment throughout by skilful placing, for contrast, of little interludes of fun and wit and the wit with its dry thrusts at film industry habits and New York film critics is sharp and tasty. "I am still big," says Miss Swanson. "It's the films that have got small." Violent death is, of course, the only answer to the dramatic ascent of feeling, which is occasionally overstated by the soundtrack music. William Holden is the struggling Hollywood writer, quite useful, a. tommy Chine Rafterty Wally Kin Gordon Jackaoa Mic Blue "Ma" Hint Charles TlntweU )oha Kir CharliJ Michael Pale The' Trooper 'T'HIS pleasant and refreshing trifle, made in South Australia by Ralph Smart, seems to strike the happy middle way between the mood of "The Overlanders" and the mood of "Bush Christmas." It is not an important or even an exciting picture, but the story is related fluently; and the-acting, like the direction, is thoroughly sensible, natural and unforced.

George Heath's photography, especially of vast landscapes, is grand; some of his scenes, indeed, look artistic enough to have been photographed straight from Streeton's canvasses. The story, which makes no "epic" pretences, simply narrates an overland journey by an Australian family about 1900, the family's establishment of a homestead in the Ncver-Never, and their misunderstandings and skirmishes with a tribe of aborigines whose waterhole they share. The aborigines are a curiously unexciting and shuffling lot even when they start throwing spears. There is not much dramatic tension but interest is held throughout by the warm friendliness and likeableness of the characters. A chance for dramatic tautness seems to have been lost, too, by the script's indecision as to whether to enlist sympathy for the blacks or the whites.

Its indecision might reflect a healthy willingness to be fair to both sides; but it doesn't help drama much. Most people, perhaps, will be sympathetic for the blacks. This is because the head of the family, as drawn by Chips Rafferty, is a bit of a bully and a bit bull-headed. A slight romance is touched in deftly and attractively by Scottish Gordon Jackson and Nonnie Piper. Charles Tingwell provides Mr.

Jackson with a punch on the jaw. 4). Duck Virainia arrtnn ri 7. Mannequin's frock when -Two Toa Tessie wears it for formal occasions. S.

Silly exploit before medicinal gran fell from heaven. (7, 7) IS. Tangling the composer fish. (9) 15. Radical's musicologist in a musical comedy.

(J, 6) I- Four Arthurian romances mother th repository and go up with Idrieta. 2. Man-eater put a pen point in the artificial waterway. (8) 24. Boy from rice.

(4) 27. Primitive weapon. (4) 2. Ivy bush to coppers. (3) SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD Ko.

82 'Gun Crazy" Screenplay by MacKlnlay Kantor and Millard Kaufman: produced by Frank and Maurice ArtUta release; directed by Joaeph H. Lewie. Jem aa Annie Laurie Starr John Dall Bart Tare Packet! I Wlllouehby Aaabel Shaw Rb, TJ A GOOD deal of skill has gone into this well-made, often tense story of a murderous woman bandit and a rather pleasant fellow who, being her husband, thinks crime is the easiest way to keep ber in furs and lush apartments. The film is derived from a story by MacKinlay Kantor who has a rare gift for showing the remarkably intense drama that flows beneath the serene and stodgy surface of any ordinary, self-respecting town. Kantor knows his business; millions liked the story he provided for "The Best Years Of Our Lives." This story, driven along at a hectic pace by the director, concerns a boy who is mad about guns but wouldn't kill any living creature.

He meets a sharpshoot-ing belle, Annie Laurie Starr, in a carnival sideshow contest and from then on he is a criminal, with NONNIE PIPER the crimes getting gradually worse. The climax is a pay-roll hold-up in an enormous carcase butchery and then the mountain man-hunt. Much of the camera-work is done from the car in which the bandits approach and flee from their victims, and this gives an audience the feeling of being in the bandits' shoes, with all their desperation and agitation and fierce nerve-strain. The film runs about 10 minutes longer than it can maintain a high dramatic tension, but it is an efficient and appealing entertainment of its type. The principals are John Dall, who does a right-about-turn from "Rope," in which he was a criminal awfully delighted with crime, to become a criminal who IS in miseries nf This is highly nervous acting.

Peggy Cummins, also, has some of the headlong recklessness that her role needs. (Civic.) 'Louisa" Screenplay by Stanley Roberta; produced for MsSarHJi! Ak" Jonald Stearin as Hal None Sprint njloa Lou la Nortos Abel Surasldc MSS- Jet, Vl'XaS Jimmy Hunt Carle, Norton Connie Oilchrlst ouSye 'THE family-comedy routine gets a moderately fresh and engaging treatment here, mainly through the services of some capable actors, for there is nothing startlingly new or side-splitting in the subject-matter. Ronald Reagan, as the promising architect (architecture is a very popular profession for not-so-young Toad" feafurln. "Ictlnhori Crane, based on Washinaioa Trtlns'a "Thai tKS S' Hollow." and Jf 1' "scd on Kenneth Grahame's 'The Wind In the produced by wilt related and sunt by Bina Crosby. "Mr.

fccJor. T- VyALT DISNEY'S followers, of all ages, will be glad to find him back with an all-cartoon film in this translation from Washington living's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows." Neither of the two episodes represent Disney at his very best his wit seems to be becoming rather blunt and too dependent on violent slapstick but they are free of the excessive cuteness of some of his recent films. "Mr. Toad" is in all respects the more engaging tale. The story is appropriate, and Grahame's delightful characters, the debonair Toad, the kindly Mole, the upright Rat, and the crusty Badger, give it a charm and humanity missing from 'Ichabod" where all the characters are supposed to be "human." "Ichabod" tells the story of tho eccentric schoolmaster of Sleepy Hollow, who schemes for the hand of the local heiress and is frightened out of town by a fake ghost.

The folky atmosphere doesn't mix very well with Bing Crosby's songs, and the episode depends too much on bludgeoning slapstick and violence for its humour. And why must Disney always introduce) nightmare and horror into films that are ostensibly meant for children? The Toad episode comes first-parents may well take the family to the first half and skip the end. (Mayfair.) now there is an easy, safe wav sat nablt baa chance to eonquer you. stop (fi SMOKING DAY FC.O I I Mywoi LI antl ll BANIS smokir. "ndarfully successful "'T uiacorfrv BANISHCS all craving for JJprov.

appetis, and health. Say. tnosieyj be pounds In pocket. Thousand aured. InesrnslyeVapaad.

anal tucresa OUARANTIID WRITE FOR FREE BOOKLET Become a non-smoker by aerdlna IT JSB BOOKLET. so aaekh.t." with laetraetleei a4 swetal apaeieaUeei Una. Bend at anea eneloalnt nana and add rasa anal ttarnoa tot aoauat. Jack Elwood, Dept. II84 1444.

C.f.O., Sywawr. luviua. Acta iRa i. "SUNDAY HERALD" CROSSWORD No. 83 I.

Falsehood by a girl insect's brother thai gorgeously coloured. (10) J. Punch a patient fellow. (3) Vegetables shot by 1,000 bowmen to poil squabbles. (7) It.

State custom it food. (7) 12. Hub divided by aisles to church. (4) 13. Bird.

(J) 14. Cartel it muddled by Intoxicating fc-tf'i mMIm md i mw pu.lt ViO SDpMt 17. Half a club watercourse that kat dried up in India lo negative an ankle. (5) IS. Span a game for four.

(6) 1. Half a tecond. (3) 21. Samuel's Irainer and the cricket team are in this cure-all. (6) 22.

Indian title. (5) IX Follow fight in a small, cramped rail way carriage. (01 24. It hat characteristics of the os, buffalo and horse. (3) 25.

Poem by a civic leader in Sydney. (4) IS. Brown backed lha row when trimmer. (7) JO. Victory without hair for a one-lime Prime Minister.

(7) It. A hide-out on the Red Sea. (4) J2. A jump by the little cow describes an attractive book. (4, 3) DOWN: I.

Death of a woman observed in much poetry. (S. 61 I. Personal unpleasantness to approve a publication. (4) 3.

Masks hay and veil. IBs 4. Snout indicates an In Md JsJodlf complete list of dir- citrons. (4).