The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 63

THE SUN-HERALD, FEBRUARY 26t 1956, 49 dp oDOOoaog'Dbd d' pWpoo .1 COMMENCING MARCH 27. REVIEWS NEW FILMS ftYV'TMEATKl mil THE AUSTRALIAN ELIZABETHAN THEATRE TRUST presents 19. RAY LAWLERS March 27 to April IIOYTS CITY THEATRES REGENT BM248? "RAINS OF RANCHIPUR" Cinemascope and Color Dc-Lue. Lana Turner. Richard Burton (A) and featur-etles.

PLAZA MA6107 "HOUSE OF BAMBOO" Cinemascope and Color. Robert Ryan, Robert Stack A. ilh Original Sydney Cast) i and -1 THE AUSTRALIAN DRAMA COMPANY in Aprii 2t to May 17 TWELFTH NIGHT May 19 to June 9 THE RIVALS PREFERENTIAL BOOKINGS AT Pitt we WRITTEN applications for the entire ELEVEN WEEKS mtbsoh are being received immediately at W. H. Pali George Street, Sydney.

Applications should be accompanied bv remittance ana a stamped addressed envelope PRICES: Stalls and Dress Circle Ig3 and 159: Crarnf Circle t9 run iksi fMt.li is. STATE At 19.10, 1.35, 4.40, THE BENNY GOODMAN STORY," Steve Allen (Tech.) (G). Pins "Red (Teen.) G. BM243I G). Plus "Red Sundown" CAPITOL "THE PURPLE MASK," fl UTony Curtis tTcch.) iG.

Pius "Running Wild" LAK I.BA4905. VICTORY "FORBIDDEN CARGO," Wi'ool Pair), -If Ifil Pins Steps the Gallows," Scott Brady (A). MA6S66. 0 lyric MONDAY! "LOVES OF 9 CARMEN," Glenn Ford BtTcch.) (A). Plus "Born Yes- ferdaj" (A).

MA4981. VOGUE (Double Bay) I "ROAD TO HOPE" Camino Delia Featmettes. 2.15, 8.15. 0 Lyceum closed for Annual gMcthodist Conference. TODAY 30 Mile Cruise 3 p.m.

Adults 4 Child 16 TONIGHT Variety Concert 8 p.m. Admission 56 No. 2 Jelly, Quay Station. ROYAL W6HTLYfirB-t5 J.C.W. PRESENTS mm a Aii-srAft cast PLANS-Jt- NICHOLeONB' tj JBT jf PUNS tUZAMTHAN "THEWTIt EiiK rmtt At tO.SO, 1.59, 4.50, rTtWmR serious music lovers with all the familiar, juvenile wisecracks.

Otherwise it tells its uneventful story with all the polite cliches of Hollywood biographies of living people, and manages to stave off boredom better than one might expect. Goodman is played in a colourlessly relaxed style by Steve Allen; Mr. Goodman himself, unseen, contributes the film's best assets in the soundtrack. (State.) 'Timberjack" OTERL1NG HAYDEN and David Brian battle it out for the possession of a disputed timber lease and a thickset saloon belle, the latter played by Vera Ralston. Standard, forgettable rough-and-tumble, tricked out with some fine mountain scenery in Trucolor and some tedious song numbers.

(Palladium.) "New York Confidential" THERE are the raw materials for quite a tense little crime-thriller here, put together without much shape or cohesion. Broderick Crawford and Richard Conte, assets to any gangster film that needs a blustering crime boss and an ice-blooded trigger man, are effective enough. So is much of the reporting of modern top-echelon racketeering. But the story that should have bound it all together has gone astray, and the touches of personal drama seem silly and inconsequen tial, (l'alace.) Klos "jne irnq aniimp CincmaScope. CENTURY BM224I "EAST OF EDEN," Cinemascope and Warncrcolor.

Julie Harris, James Dean A), and CincmaScope fcaturetlcs. MAYFAIR BW1374 "THE SEVEN VEAR ITCH," Cinemascope and Color De-luxe, Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewcii (A. CincmaScope fcaturetles. ESQUIRE MA6708 "MARTY" Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair (A). Plus fea-turettcs.

PARIS MA9I93 "VERDI, KING OF MELODY" vith stars of La Scala and Metropolitan Operas G) and featurettes, EMBASSY BW1863 "YOUNG LOVERS" Odile Versois. David Knight (A and "Runaway Bus" (G). PALACE MA6287 "NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL" Brod. Crawford, Marilyn Maxwell. (Adults).

Pius "Cattle Town" re-issue, G). PALLADIUM MA5316 'TIMBERJACK" Sterling Hay-den, Vera Ralston CG. Plus "The Counterfeiters" (A) (reissue). OUNS: EMPIRE MI0 KICHOLSON'S FRA1SQUW COMING BACK TO THE EMPIRE EASTER! GRANT W8 TO KKLLV Clt I LFREO 58 A TffiE'K NlTCHCOCKSWtelH-gj-J 8 BWB313 sir 31 i li I i i MAHLY E0ND1 J. CROW K3HGS IS" JAltiCS THjrkWt II 2l ptBS Tom and Jcrrj I BW 1451 Tech.

Cartoon, News, etc. OMOKROWI 1.50, 4.50 and 8. Kins' at 8. Plus M.G.M. Teen.

Cartoon, TO-DAY frWjfMKv(s triumph fmF-. ROBERT TAYLOR mmmm mU SM. ARRIVES ONE WEEK FROM JOHNNI I1 'tk "The Road fo Hope" ITALIAN film-making, rather shallow and shoddy lately, returns towards its best artistic standards in this haunting story about out-of-work Sicilian miners, and about the soul-crushing troubles that torment them as they fearfully journey northwards towards their land of hope, France. Despite the last few minutes, where the film becomes laboured in pace and sentimentally optimistic in a Hollywoodish way, the whole production is a classic which belongs in the conv pany of "Shoeshine," "Bicycle Thieves" and "Open Ciiy," so truthful and compassionate is its vision of brave little people in a frightening world. Director Pietro Germi brings a moody pictorial beauty to his scenes which is quite unforgettable in its force and originality, and he brings rare emotional power to them by his gift for suggesting great undercurrents of feeling beneath the surface life of his grave and unhappy characters.

Several of his scenes could hardly fail to fill the hardest hearts with pity and tenderness as in the silent scene where the despairing father, penniless and jobless, gazes speculatively on the three ragged little children who watch and wonder what these looks can mean. All the thoughts in the minds of the father and the children throb poignantly through the scene and, remember, not one word is said during it! Raf Vallone, looking like Italy's answer to Burt Lancaster, is the strong, grave, untalkative character who leads the Sicilians bravely through their troubles. And the troubles are plentiful. A confidence-man cheats them all of their savings, they are involved in a brawl in Rome, they unwittingly work in a northern wheat-field during a general strike, they are harassed by a wild character with a knife, and finally there is blizzard on the mountain border. Elena Varzi is the woman who, cast out by her Church and her family because of her love for the vicious local villain, finds redemption at last in the love of a good man.

She overacts the "hunted" look at times, and sometimes too obviously poses it for the camera, but altogether she gives the part notable dramatic force. (Vogue.) "Marly" ERE is a fresh and en-l dearing film about an ugly, little Bronx butcner and his long search for a wife in a world that gives him the heartache of brush-off after brush-off. "What dames go for, I ain't got," he announces to his aged Italian mother when he tries to stir his flagging bachelor spirits to the wife-hunt once more. His Saturday nights are a lonely time of pottering about the house, or drinking beer with womanless fellows as lonely and dull as himself, or reading the funnies, or looking television shows. But he is roused for one last time nd down to the Stardust Ballroom he goes, and there he meets her, a dowdy schoolteacher who has just been deserted by her bored escort.

And, optimistically, the script brings romance to both of them. the eagerness of these two unwanted ones for each ohers trust and each finer confidences is one of he several deeply moving 'nings a film that has, at mes, the eloquent simplicity of French and Italian pnre films in its approach to character. Another moving thing is 9 0 0 Ld, Hurry 9 liaak Far Gaod Sen is I LEE GORDON PRESENTS IN PERSON RAF VALONE fo Hope" the study of the feelings of the old widowed mother when it occurs to her that romance for her son may mean loneliness and unwant-edness for her. Paunchy Ernest Borgnine, with a face like some malevolent gnome out of a German fairy-tale, acts as if he had been a good-natured suburban butcher alt his life a brilliant performance, wilh some very clever changes of mood. His work is matched by Betsy Blair as the girl.

Her eagerness and anxieties are shown most poignantly. (Esquire.) "Forbidden Cargo" DRUG-RUNNING is the theme of this efficient little English time-killer which tells its story in a crisp matter-of-fact way and director Harold French makes this style so refreshing that the slackness of tension throughout doesn't interfere much with enjoyment. A worse offence is the way the film abandons this matter-of-fact manner in the last reel, when it gets a rush of bad melodrama to the head, with villains and sleuths all doing some improbably silly things. The narrative starts on the coast of East Angiia where whimsically toothy Joyce (Irenfell, still gushing and simpering like the caricature of a games mistress, interrupts her bird-watching activities to tell the Customs about some curious "naval" manoeuvres along that stretch of coastline. It isn't long before agent Nigel Patrick, competent and glib as always, is on the way to the south of France to find out which members of the cosmopolitan yachting set are trying to smuggle 300,000 worth of dope into England.

There is murder, there is a fight, there is some underwater swimming, and there is a pretty brunette who is more interesting than most of these pretty brunettes because Elizabeth Sellars is the actress. (Victory.) "The Benny Goodman Story rr A CONFUSED sort of snobbery haunts this smoothly commonplace Technicolor biography of a famous jazz musician. At first it goes to elaborate lengths to establish that Mr. Goodman is a musician thoroughly trained in the classical tradition, who can enrapture a stiff-shirted audience with a bit of Mozart's clarinet concerto. Then it turns about and ridicules Ntehtly at 8 SEATS: 'Tlvoll (BA4831) Nicholson's.

Paling's. Mats. iyOLl. i I LEO DE LYON FREE TRIP to AMERICA-ENGLAND I by PAN AMERICAN AIRWAYS i "The WorliTt Mo Experienced AWite." I Johnnie kissej ft girt ih eudiencs each show white rtgt "Watiting My Baby Back Home." Thste girls wilt be invited' fe a dinner wHb Johnnie, where one of them and her hut- band or chaperone witl be awarded an ebso- lutefy FREE att-expense paid reittrn trip by Part I American Airweyt to America and England, I Four day Itt Let Vega en route, I also three dayt in historic London. Any lady, fy place in the Stadium, on any day may win, THE HOLLY SISTERS PEG-LEG BATES LOLA DEE BOOK NOW AT WORLD THEATRETTE, LOBE THEATR-ETTE, bofh from 8.30 a.m.

fo 9,30 p.m. inc. anci also at NICHOLSON'S, PALING'S, KIPPAX'S, OLDRELD'S. SHOW DATES; M01. 6, 7, 8t 10 I MAT.

4 6.4 PRICES S.I.I Ringside 20- 256 296 Terrace 10- 156 196 General 4- 76 96 I.