THE CINEMA
" Student Nurse" and "Steel." For future release.—" Soldier- Sailor." At the London Pavilion.—" Music for Millions." At the Empire.—" Here Come the Waves." At the Plaza.
THE latest British Council films, produced primarily for overseas audiences, raise again the question of national publicity. Student Nurse and Steel reach a high standard of photography and editing, but the sound tracks scarcely match their high propaganda responsi- bilities. In Student Nurse, director Francis Searle's strong visual account of the training of nurses is weakened by a musical score which clogs scientific precision with romantic and emotional asso- ciations. In the operating theatre, music renders the masked per- sonnel sinister, the assembled instruments inquisitorial and the surgeon raising his knife for the first incision is translated by the orchestra into an impersonation of Boris Karloff in the haunted house.
Steel is photographically sensational. Here are the familiar indus- trial shots of steel works, Bessemer ccnverters and rolling mills, but this time in Technicolor. The effect is much more impressive than in the conventionally romantic subjects which the colour camera used once to regard as peculiarly its own. Red hunting coats and gorgeous period interiors are commonplace compared with the rich browns, purples and reds of this world of roaring heat. The camera has been always well placed, and the film is informative as to process, giving as clear an account of steel-making as has yet appeared on the screen. But surely overseas they will be asking not for such information, or even for assurances as to the quality of British steel, but they will want to know how Britain proposes to organise her steel industry so as to give it a sound economic basis in the post-war world. Policy, rather than process, is the matter at issue.
A new Ministry of Information production, Soldier-Sailor, is the story of the men behind the guns of our merchant ships. Alexander Shaw has lead a production unit to the Mediterranean in search of action and local colour, and the result is a technically polished film which seeks to impress us with the warm comradeships of war rather than its melodramatic excitements. The central characters are two sailors and a soldier who share the perils of shipwreck and a successful engagement with E-boats on a voyage home from Bari. We enjoy the virile humours of their life on board as well as their obvious pleasure at a first contact with the bazaars and cafes of exotic ports of call. On the mess-decks there is talk of politics and the post-war world, as well as the evocative reminiscences of home. For my taste, the film is perhaps too much concerned with its fictional elements (the misunderstanding about the girl back home and so on) and has too little to say about the practicalities of this vital war-tithe job. But here is a film of fact which seeks to steal some of the glamour of the studios. It seeks to give the public what the public is popularly supposed to want ; and although not all the fictional situations are completely- convincing, Soldier- Sailor will be a good test of how cinemagoers like their facts to be dressed.
Music for Millions is a back-stage • musical, with Mr. Jose Iturbi's symphony orchestra filling a role normally occupied in such productions by a swing band and its crooners. The story is un- important, but the film achieves some distinction by virtue of a truly remarkable performance by eight-year-old Margaret O'Brien. There is something uncanny about her poise and the maturity of a performance which remains nevertheless true to the instincts and actions of childhood. In Here Come the Waves, Mr. Bing Crosby is satisfying without being sensational, whilst Miss Betty Hutton appears as twins and balances her normal harum-scarum perform- ance with an alternative and more sedate version of her personality.
EDGAR ANSTEY.
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