THE CINEMA
"The Hasty Heart." (Warner.)-4, Dear Mr. Prohack." (New Gallery and Tivoli.)—" You Can't Sleep Here." (Odeon.)— " Le Secret de Mayerling." (Polytechnic.) THE talking film, we are reminded, comes of age this year, and any addict who feels this to be a matter of congratulation might do well to pay a visit to The Hasty Heart and purge his emotions with pity for his fellows and with terror of the capabilities of the British cinema. This glutinous concoction concerns the soldier in the Burmese military hospital who has little time to live and rejects, in his bitterness, the friendship of his ward-mates—who represent, by a curious coincidence and one at a time, our brothers from the Dominions, our American cousins, and our coloured friends. A Cameron Highlander (from Ayrshire), he is melted by a timely gift of Highland dress • he pipes his eye and his pibroch ; and the pretty nurse hides her breaking heart behind a joke about haggis. The dialogue plumbs new depths of mawkishness ; the acting scales hitherto untrodden heights of ham. The credit-titles (how did you guess ?) have a tartan background. Wild horses will not drag from me the name of one solitary actor in this sorry affair. I observe merely that Mr. Bing Crosby as a priest, together with the dog Lassie, might have given it a needed touch of astringency.
* * * * Dear Mr. Prohack, though no masterpiece, is a better advertise- ment for British studios than this, and, if the director is not always certain whether it is a farce he is making (ably assisted by Miss Hermione Baddeley) or an amiably satirical comedy, Mr. Cecil Parker remains—happily--the same endearing figure. Here, indeed, is an actor who has precisely the touch needed for comedy on the screen —a lighter touch, that is, than the stage requires. He plays a civil servant sardonically pleased with his own pomposity. Would that the supporting parts were as neatly handled ! And must Mr. Dirk Bogarde, I wonder, be condemned for ever to a cad's coif ; Miss Glynis Johns to a pedal progression hampered by the ghost of that mermaid's tail she wore as Miranda ?
* * * If the worst that can be said of Dear Mr. Prohack is that it is uncertain in its aim, then it must be admitted that You Can't Sleep Here could hardly be more specific. Bedrooms are funny, which- ever way you take them. They are funny if the characters aren't married—see, here is Mr. Cary Grant locked in Miss Sheridan's room—and funny if they are—for here is the same couple married, and never alone in their bedroom for a moment. What ? You still aren't laughing! Then here's Mr. Grant dressed as a woman. Bless my soul ; I give up. * * * *
The Polytechnic in Regent Street has taken to a policy of show- ing Continental films and kicks off with yet another version—a French one this time—of the Mayerling affair, with the Crown Prince Rudolf portrayed as a liberal who is murdered at the Emperor's bidding for meddling with Hungarian nationalism. Compared with earlier versions, M. Jacques Delannoy's Le Secret de Mayerling pleases chiefly by reason of its loving reconstruction of the mode, manners and decor of the Austrian eighteen-eighties ; its politics arc implausible, M. Jean Marais as Rudolf is a stick, and Mlle. Dominique Blanchar as Marie Vetsera seems to confuse gush with
girlishness and imbecility with innocence. CYRIL RAY.
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