All Mixed Up
Loving You. (Plaza.)—Action of the Tiger. (Empire.)—Man of a Thousand Faces. (Odeon, Leicester. Square.)—The Abom- inable Snowman. (General re- lease.) THERE is nothing absolutely repul- sive about Elvis Presley except his flair, which flips in long and very greasy wisps as far as his eyelashes, and extends in a pair of depraved-looking sideburns almost to his nostrils. Apart from that he is really rather nice, a plump-faced boy with inward-looking eyes that are quite flat on the underside (a powerful part, if you notice, of the smouldering look), an air of extreme mindlessness—not stupidity exactly, simply non-cerebration, D. H. Lawrence style— and a mouth that really, I suspect, accounts for the moral indignation he arouses more than any- thing else about him. He is appalling-looking to the extent that modern life is appalling compared with the world of, say, Us or The Secret Garden or Scouting for Boys; his cult is an indication of a lot of things we have only just begun ad- mitting but that have existed, however much we kept quiet about them, for years. But his ap- pallingness is social more than moral; it is not, I would say, depravity (for all the whiskers): he is the mixed-upness of the whole juvenile world rolled into one twitching, acrobatic, frenetic pair of blue jeans. His thighs are the most obtrusive anatomical gimmick since Jane Russell, but the much-advertised sexuality, though blatant, does not strike one as lewd. And for sheer hard work and animal spirits the Jamboree might have done worse than take a look at him. Altogether, though he makes me feel elderly and, after two minutes of song, quite exhausted, I can think
of worse symbols of a generation than Mr. Presley, who seems to be just the logical, pro- letarian extension of Dean, Brando and similar lyrical thugs thrown up by the middle Fifties.
Loving You, his new film, is so much a 'vehicle' for him that it seems, and will surely be taken as, biography; or at least portraiture. He plays a young workman who gets taken up as a singer, has the whole teenage population of America in hysterics, is denounced by the middle-aged as a corrupting influence, and remains through it all a shy, sensitive boy whom 'anyone would be proud to have as a son,' as someone rather far- fetchedly remarks during the film. These recog- nisable goings-on are punctuated by songs in Mr. Presley's indescribable manner, with a great snapping of guitar strings, a voice like black treacle, and such a writhing, thrusting, possessed- looking body as sets all the girls under twenty squealing like electrocuted mice. It is these songs, not their attendant squeals, that make this silly film full of interest. For there you have Mr. Presley with the lid off, the Lawrence gawekeeper up to date in a white satin shirt frogd with crimson, exalted, encouraged, egged on to be out- rageous and looking, when it is all over, faintly outraged himself. Or maybe I have just been swallowing the film's message too thoroughly. Maybe he is well beyond outrage. But his trump card is, he doesn't look it. Director : Hal Kanter.
I have yet to meet a more confusing film than Action of the Tiger; or, come to that, a phonier. It is about an ill-assorted couple who go on a rescue party to Albania, quarrelling and (of course) falling in love all the way; to get out, he, some Greek children, she, her brother, a Burgess- like ex-diplomat who jumped across the Curtain and then regretted it. Adventures pile up, refugees tack on, till it's hard to know who's who, what's what, or, worse, who's on whose side and why, since everyone seems to chop about with be- wildering frequency. Then the main characters are so ill-cast, Van Johnson as a tough money- grubber, imagine, and Martine Carol, imagine even more, as a motherly, sisterly body full of tender, mountaineering courage, that one cannot believe a word they say. Really the only bright spot is the ubiquitous Herbert Lom, who plays a brigand with an air of winking wildly at the audience. Director : Terence Young.
Man of a Thousand Faces: James Cagney as
Lon Chaney, miscast; but an unusual life shown us and an original slant on it. Director : Joseph Pevney.
The Abominable Snowman: when this was shown as a television play they made the big mistake of showing us the Snowmen in person. Now they don't. But the thing seems to have grown rather insipid in transit. Director : Val
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