Upside Down
Victory at Sea. (Berkeley.)—The Truth About Women. (General release.)—The Story of Doctor Schweitzer. (Cinephone.) - Don't Go Near the Water. (Empire.) THINGS, as if to prove just how absurd publicity and distribution can get, were mbre upside down than usual this week. The best film is an American war documen- tary relegated to the outback of the Tottenham Court Road; the best light entertainment is a British comedy that, with everyone asking where British comedies have got to, never even got a West End showing or a press show; the dullest, if you can believe it, is the official story of Dr. Schweitzer; and way, way down at the lower depths of fatuity is the one film that started off with the fireworks and starlets of a Leicester Square premiere.
Victory at Sea is an hour and a half condensed from the thirteen hours of the same title televised by the BBC in half-hourly episodes, a history of the war with the emphasis on naval warfare but with a good deal else thrown in—jungle fighting, the invasion of Normandy, London. The material comes from everywhere, including captured enemy films, which prove some of the most spectacularly interesting (Hitler visiting Rome, the Japanese suicide pilots taking off), and is put to- gether with what, at this difficult distance, seems almost startling skill and tact, for it manages to make the events appear passionately exciting and immediate, and at the same time to give them a remote, proud heroism without ever suggesting that war in itself is anything but evil and ugly. Produced by Henry Salomon, who wrote the excellent commentary, and edited by Isaace Kleinerman, this is one of the few films I can imagine giving young people who cannot remem- ber it well an idea of what the war really felt like : though it has, and suitably, an 'A' certificate.
The Truth About Women is a better-than-
average British film (which isn't saying a lot these days, but still) about the loves of Laurence Har- vey in the early days of the century; and why, with so much nasty nonsense press-shown and publicised, it should be bundled away so darkly is anyone's guess, not mine.
The Story of Dr. Schweitzer is a prosy piece that has done what seems the impossible—made the man and his achievements seem dreary: And since the film, we are told, has Dr. Schweitzer's support and approval, he must presumably ap- prove of the portentous head-wagging, the sententious maxims, the humourless and heavy manner, the soulful heaving at the organ, he is saddled with. And so I am sorry to say that instead of coming out into Oxford Street thinking how wonderful and noble and remarkable he must be, one came out feeling what a priggish old bore he sounds—which is surely untrue, yet is hardly Pierre Fresnay's fault, but the script's and the director's, that made him look uncannily like Schweitzer but gave him nothing but (presumably) the mannerisms. Now even if Schweitzer has those mannerisms, one would presumably, in real life, be able to get over them, particularly faced with his hospital as evidence for the defence; so it is a measure of the film's complete inadequacy, imaginative and technical, that it never manages to make one feel even a hint of greatness or a twinge of admiration. And it is dubbed into a variety of English accents that further add to its air of secondhandness. Director : Andre Haguet.
Don't Go Near the Water is farce played with the dogged determination of a snail's Grand Prix, about American public relations on a Pacific island during the war. Rather ghoulishly true to anyone who has had anything to do with Ameri- can public relations, but never, not once, even mildly funny. With Glenn Ford (wasted) and a pleasant girl called Gia Scala, looking faintly embarrassed at finding herself mixed up in such a ridiculous business. Director : Charles Walters.
ISABEL QUIGLY
Previous page
