CINEMA
So Bright the Flame. (Empire.)—The Quiet Man. (Plaza.)— Just Across the Street. (Leicester Square.)
DR. EMILY DUNNING was one of the Florence Nightingales of America at the turn of the century, a woman who, by hard work and undeviating determination not to notice the slights and insults offered her by the medical profession, became the first woman doctor to serve in Gouverneur hospital in New York. So Bright the Flame, based on a book of Dr. Dunning 's, tells her stoi y, and a very inspiring one it is. For though the dream she followed is still a nightmare to many—even now women doctors are heavily mistrusted in most quarters, which include the entire male population of, the world—the overcoming of what appear to be insuperable obstacles always commands respect
Miss June Allyson is admirable as the young woman who uncom- plainingly suffered humiliations, who night after night was sent out in a horse-ambulance after a full day's work, and who through selflessness, skill and a few lucky breaks eventually won the medical equivalent of spurs. They also won her the love of a good man, but it is not made known to us whether, when she finally married him, she was to lay aside her stethoscope for good or wield it and the darning-needle simultaneously. This problem confronts all career women, and it would have been interesting to know how this brave pioneer answered it. Mr. Gary Merrill, that fine actor Mr. Arthur Kennedy and that even finer actress Miss Mildred Dunnock support Miss Allyson with the same steady brightness of the torch she carries ; the script is intelligent, Mr. John Sturges' direction simple and sympathetic ; in all a most satisfactory film, however feminist or anti-feminist one may be.
The Quiet Man is set in Ireland, green as the proverbial emerald - and sunnier than we can remember, beautiful and bursting at the seams with traditional blarney. Mr. John Wayne is an American returning to the land of his forefathers to settle down in what he hopes, incorrectly, will be peace. Miss Maureen O'Hara is the volatile colleen whom he courts. Mr. Barry Fitzgerald is a marriage- broker, Mr. Ward Bond a priest and Mr. Victor McLaglen the villain of the piece. Though Hollywood treatment of home-grown themes always fills me with trepidation, Mr. John Ford has taken a deal of trouble not to exaggerate, and although it is, of course, nigh impossible not to make the Irish whimsical, to avoid the leprechaun motif altogether, he and his team of first-class actors have failed, admirably, to embarrass. Only Miss O'Hara's red-flannel skirt, which she wears for sheep-minding, is just what we expected ; the rest is pleasantly surprising.
The film is extremely long—it takes over two hours—and relates the heroine's determination to be wooed with old-fashioned Irish ritual and the hero's equal determination to do it in American style. Nothing startling happens, and the utter lack of sophistication, the attractive brogues, Mr. Fitzgerald's spirituous amiability and the cool green hills rolling gently into misty blues make this a refreshing picture. Just Aeross the Street is also a very satisfactory film in a very different way. It is a comedy starring Mr. John Lund as a plumber and Miss Ann Sheridan as a work-girl he mistakes for a rich banker's daughter. The screen play, which has as many exits and entrances as a French bedroom farce, does not, on reflection, bear elucidating, but on the spot and at the time it seemed to me to be deliciously funny. Decorated with gay little twists and curlecues, all of them obvious, perhaps, but all of them drawn amusingly, this is light entertainment at its best. j would especially commend to you Mr. Cecil Kellaway who, as Miss Sheridan's ne'er-do-well father, manages to invest fecklessness and boozing with tremendous charm. Mr. Robert Keith and Miss Natalie Schafer also provide moments
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