Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

1S4 professional quality, made without any other consideration than that they are contributing to the glory of God and the benefit of humanity. Meanwhile, here is a step in the right direction and Bro. Dennis Robert will be glad to bring his film around to your district to help you to understand the breadth and the depth of the work which St. de la Salle did for the same sublime objects. V. CONTINENTAL FILMS DONNE SENZA NOME (Unwanted Women) Starring: Simone Simon, Valentina Cortese, Vivi Gici and Fran§oise Rosay. Director: Geza Radvanyi. Distributors: London Films. Certificate: X. Category: A. Running time: 97 minutes. Films which deal with war and its aftermath fall into various categories. There are those which sensationalise their subject and seem to be using the misfortunes of men to gain success at the box-office. Others appear to lean heavily upon political or national prejudices. Vet others take advantage of contemporary fashions in strife to place their stars, whether male or female, against the most lurid backgrounds. It is only rarely that one detects a note of true humanity in a film which treats of man’s inhumanity to man. Donne Senza Nome is such a film. It is not pretty to look at, still less to think about. Nevertheless, for those who realise the power and the duty of the cinema to focus attention upon international problems, this film is worth looking for. It is a pity that it contains elements which will enable the unscrupulous or unimaginative publicity agent to attract merely sensation-hunting patrons, but that is inevitable in a film of this nature and does not detract from its essential merit. It is the story of the concentration camp for displaced women situated in Italy near Trieste, and populated by French, German, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian, Czech and Yugoslavic women who, for one reason or another, are without identity papers and are, therefore, not so much imprisoned within the camp, as herded there for their own security by the inability of the politicians to arrive at a sane and human solution of their problem. The central character is a Yugoslav (Valentina Cortese), who is determined that her baby shall be born in freedom outside the camp. Her efforts to escape do not succeed and she dies while giving birth to her child. The baby is saved from being sent to the orphanage when a kindly Italian guard adopts him and gives him a name and a country and the opportunity to live and grow, to which all human beings are entitled. There are characters and scenes which are repulsive, but they are an integral part of the whole picture and could not be omitted wdthout destroying the point of the story. The direction is firm and seldom overdone. The strongest scene is the attempted escape of the women and the measures adopted by the guards to prevent them. The quiet talk of the kindly Commandant (Mario Ferrari), who explains why they are safer within the camp gates, is very moving. The cynical interjections of Francoise Rosay, as a Belgian countess, the saucy disregard of propriety by Simone Simon as a French girl who gets herself a husband and so liberty, the resigned devotion to dutv of Gino Cervy as the officer who adopts the baby, all combine to give a remarkably restrained and credible picture of one of the most heart-rending problems left in the path of the war that has never ended. V. LA RONDE Starring: Simone Signoret, Simon Simone, Danielle Darrieux, Jean Louis Barrault, Gerard Philipe and Anton Walbrook. Director: Max Ophuls. Distributors: G.C.T. (Distributors)' Ltd. Certificate: X. Category: A. Running time: 125 minutes. This film has taken three awards : as the best French film this year at