Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

June, 1946 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 41 tempo. Without lacking unity or singleness of action, it presents a broad and varying scene, including classrooms and walks at Yale, snow scenes, home life, foreign life, and all the life of the theater. One who misses Night and Dag will lose much pleasure. F. H. LAW ★ ★ ★ THE PALE HORSEMAN. Produced by Unit-ed Films. Released by Brandon Films, Inc., in cooperation with UNRRA. Written and produced by Irving Jacoby. 1 ? minutes. Rental $2.50 per day in 1 6 mm. Pestilence, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, rides in the wake of war and inflicts sorrow upon millions of innocent children and adults. No one can see the documentary film that reveals present conditions in lands prostrated by the Second World War, without feeling keenly the intimate personal misery that war causes. The pictures are not morbid, but they horrify. They stir one to do something now to make war less possible, and to help feed the starving. Herbert H. Lehman, former Director-General of UNRRA, recommends wide showing of the film as an aid to support the National Emergency Food Collection Drive for starving countries. F. H. LAW ★ ★ ★ THE SAILOR TAKES A WIFE. MGM. Home-making comedy. Richard Whorf, Director. Screen ploy by Chester Erskine, Anne Morrison, Annie M. Chapin, and Whitfield Cook. For adults. Those who at the present time seek homes will feel grim humor in seeing the troubles of a newly married couple who find themselves in quarters where the elevator sticks between floors, the windows and doors refuse to open, the roof leaks, and the other tenants are noisy. With practically no furniture, and with constant distractions, the bride and groom (Robert Walker and June Allyson) lose their tempers and all but lose each other. Obviously, this is a farce based upon gross exaggeration. From the crude materials that he had, the director, Richard Whorf, made the most, especially in his use of the self-operating, always-sticking elevator, and the noisy janitor-man-of -allwork. Perhaps no farce ever is highly artistic : certainly this one is not. F. H. LAW SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT. Melodrama of lost identity. 20th-Fox. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Director. From a story by Marvin Borowsky. Screen play by Howard Dimsdale and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. How would you like to be uncertain who you are, to wonder if you are really you, to try in vain to remember past events, old friends and old associates? That is the condition in which John Hodiak as the central person in Somewhere in the Night found himself. The motion picture tells of his unceasing search to identify himself. The play holds its climax well, keeping the audience just as much bewildered as the main character. Such a situation unites Somewhere in the Night with other recent films about the subconscious, lost personality, hypnotism, and restoration to normal sanity. Unfortunately for psychiatry. Somewhere in the Night makes the hero do things that certainly no sane person would dare to do, walk knowingly into all kinds of dangers, and to cap all, take a defenseless young woman down to the docks late at night and go prowling about in the known habitat of dangerous men. Such escapades make Somewhere in the Night unreasonably melodramatic. A detective (Lloyd Nolan), gifted with information, always calm, always on the spot in case of need, appearing to be as fearless of danger as the hero himself, finally helps the distressed man to answer the riddle, “Who am I?” Nancy Guild, as Christy, supplies the romantic angle, and she, too, dares to go anywhere at any time and face anybody. Incidentally a bag containing two million dollars leads to a murder and to a great deal of other trouble. Certainly the picture is exciting enough, and far enough away from reality. Interesting to say, Somerset Maugham helped to improve some of the episodes. F. H. LAW ★ ★ ★ THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS. Melodrama. Paromount. Directed by Lewis Milestone. This well-plotted story is developed in a thoroughly absorbing manner and the acting is highly competent. Kirk Douglas, in his debut, makes an excellent impression. In the character of the heroine there was an opportunity to present an interesting study of an iron woman, but all the characterizations are on the surface. The dialogue is lacking in distinction. When the heroine and her weakling of a husband meet death, I felt this ending was a sop to the Censor’s office, which probably would insist that Martha’s aunt be avenged. But I wonder if a fatal beating up wasn’t coming to the aunt. After all, she had brutally clubbed her niece’s cat, an act which would rouse any lover of i)ets to commit murder. CAROLYN HARROW