THE NEW FILMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25084, 23 December 1944, Page 4

THE NEW FILMS

•"LADY IN THE DARK" HOLIDAY ENTERTAINMENT BY A STAFF COBKESPONDENT The four films reviewed this week »re musicals, two of which are photographed in colour. One, "Lady in the Dark," is specially suitable for holiday audiences who want to be pleas'antly entertained. "Lady in the Dark" (Embassy Theatre) is Moss Hart's musical play, which scored a great success on Broadway, brought to the screen on an unprecedented scale of lavishness and colour. The story touches on such matters as neurosis. Freudian complexes and psychoanalysis iii a manner that is designed more to flatter the intelligence of the spectators than to give them sound scientific instruction. But it would be carping criticism to examine the film too closely on this score, for the piece is designed to catch the eye and please the fancy. As such it' is ingeniously successful. Ginger Rogers is Liza Elliott, the efficient and immaculately-costumed editor of an expensive fashion magazine, outwardly happy and successful, but secretly tormented by fears and repressions. Only her advertising manager (Ray Milland) understands what is wrong with her, but his cheerful insolence, the film suggests, is not the right cure. Instead Liza consults a psychoanalyst to whom she confides her troubles and describes her dreams. And as her dreams are remarkably spectacular, Hollywood's technicians, art directors, dress designers and colour photographers have a field day. Every colon i in the spectrum is splashed with a lavish hand on to a series of fantastic pets—a giant wedding cake, a comic circus which becomes a courtroom occupied by a clowning judge and a jury of freaks, and a portrait sitting in which Liza is cruelly caricatured while wearing a beautiful blue dress. In her business hours Ginger Rogers feces about her role in such a painfully studied way that her transformation •in the dream sequences into a vivid i«nd amusing personality is a welcome relief. Allowed for a few fleeting minkites to dance, she gives a tantalising jglimpse of the entertainer who enchanted audiences in the years when 6he was Fred Astaire's partner. There are several sound supporting performances. Bay Milland succeeds in making a likeable character out of a role that calls chiefly for bumptious behaviour, and Mischa Aucr presents an agreeable caricature of a temperamental photographer. "Lady iu the Dark" is essentially a picture for adults in holiday mood. "Hello, 'Frisco, Hollo" (Century Theatre), is set in San Francisco in 20th Century Fox's plush and satin era (the gay nineties to the uninitiated), when actresses -ifore Gainsborough hats and long, flowing dresses and carried feather fans at least two fefet long, all of which look very well in technicolour. The principal" model for these trappings is Alice Faye, pleasant to look at and agreeable* to listen to as she sings a dozen or more songs belonging to the days when popular numbers were required to be tuneful and not to .assault one's eardrums. There are also Jack Oakie and June Havoc, who are efficiently funny, John Payne, as a music ball promoter with social ambitions, and Lynn Bari, another delectable eyeful in technicolour. Concerning the originality of the story, it would be polite to make no comment. "Hello, .'Frisco, Hello"' offers little to interest or amuse children. On the same programme is a Gaumont British newsreel with a special section devoted to the measures which were adopted in Britain to combat flying bombs. There are several remarkable scenes showing flying bombs exploded in mid-air by accurate Are from anti-aircraft guns and R.A.F. fighters. 'These pictures make a most vivid piece of reporting. "Follow the Boys" (Strand Theatre) displays an impressive list of Hollywood names in the short titles, but is likely to make patrons rub their eyes after ten minutes or so have elapsed and wonder if they have come to the right theatre. For the introduction to "Follow the Boys" describes in halting fashion the closing of the last vaudeville house in America and the decision ot' one of the jobless performers, George Raft, to go to Hollywood. There, the audience is asked to believe, he shows dancer Vera Zorina what is wrong with her technique, becomes her screen partner and marries her. All of which is singularly pointless and would be completely boring were it not for the un-intentionally-comic spectacle of Mr Raft dancing with a most do-or-die air, a sight that makes the audience snigger. When Japan strikes on December 7, Raft endeavours to enlist, is rejected and henceforth devotes himself to organising Hollywood talent into camp shows for troops in America and overseas. From then on the film presents a succession of items by some of Hollywood's most noted entertainers aiid becomes a celluloid record of such shows as "Command Performance" which have been heard over the radio for the past two years. The question is. do two songs by Jeanette MacDonald, three by Dinah Shore, a magic net by Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich. some clowning before a microphone by Sophie Tucker and Donald O'Connor and sundry other acts make a satisfactory motion picture? Only some customers, one feels will answer yes. One of the items toward the end of the picture is a connoisseur's piece. This is the brief appearance by W. C. Fields in his famous pool, table burlesque scene which has often been described but seldom seen in recent years. For this scene Fields has the same trick table he used when he was appearing in variety shows all over the world. The table is made in such a way that the cue ball, driven into the triangle of object balls, will either knock them off the table or sink them all in the ivnrious pockets. There is also a place on the table where the grotesquelytwisted cues Fields uses can be thrust right through to the floor in a comic demonstration of a masse shot. Fields has not appeared in a film for more than two years. The return of one of the few great masters of pantomime is welcome. There is some further unintentional humour toward the end, when a .Japanese submarine commander chooses the moment the Andrews Sisters begin to sing to torpedo the ship that is carrying them to a Pacific base. And to cap all, the picture concludes with one of those disembodied voices proclaiming that these and other stars do do not want praise for the work they are doing. Neither does the picture. "Follow the Boys" is unsuitable for children. "Shine On, Harvest Moon" (Civic Theatre) deals with the careers of iNora Bayes (Ann Sheridan), a popular American entertainer of the first decade of this century, and her songwriting husband, Jack Norworth (Dennis Morgan). American reviewers have noted that the story is not true to life and a critical audience would conclude that'the players are not much better. Some of tho songs have lilt and tune, but others ore little more than appropriate accompaniments to a drooping, hackneyed story. The finale shows the -pair, triumphant at last over adversity, as stars in Ziegfeld's 1907 Follies. J* ilmod in technicolour, this scene has a background of luscious green vegetation and rosy fruit and looks more like the coloured section of a gardening catalogue than a spectacular con- - "ueil* -A® a m °tion picture. " .Shine On, Harvest Moon" is unsuitable for children.