The New Pictures

Victory (Paramount). In its present phase of escapist entertainment, the cinema can think of no more useful place to train its cameras than on the moody background of the East Indies. And no writer of English fiction used that background with more skill than Polish-born Novelist Joseph Conrad. Sooner or later, Hollywood was sure to dig further into his work for a scenario.

In Conrad's Victory (first made in 1919), Paramount had the vitals of a really scary thriller. The dreadful days on the little island of Samburan when creepy Mr. Jones and his two frightening assistants were looking for some swag can curl the hair of the most composed reader. Axel Heyst, mustachioed philosopher who lives in seclusion on the island with his Chinese servant, has heroic proportions. The howling storm which engulfs the last stages of the drama is great theatre. Alma, the helpless, buffeted pianist who escapes with Heyst to the peace of Samburan from oppression in an itinerant girls' band, is a charming romantic touch.

But on the screen, due to constructional troubles, these sure-fire ingredients never quite jell into good melodrama. Scenarist John Balderston's script spends so much valuable time setting the scene and building the characters, it has to whisk through Mr. Jones's horrendous visit to Samburan. A line-up of Hollywood's most finished actors, nicely guided by the delicate directional hand of John Cromwell, holds long points, like patient bird dogs, for the chills. Then in a few hurried strokes, the villains are disposed of and it is time for the clinch.

Fredric March with his solid, unruffled disposition makes a neat and finished sketch of the brooding Heyst; Sir Cedric Hardwicke is as sinister as a haunted house with his bland, cobra-like Mr. Jones; Jerome Cowan, mouthing claxon-like Cockney accents, draws an ugly but adept picture of a psychopathic killer; sparrow-voiced Betty Field turns the mousy Alma into a heroine with dimensions. But it is an actor's movie. There is never any real suspense in a story where suspense is the hallmark.

Betty Field is still called a newcomer by Hollywood commentators. That is because she has been there less than two years. Yet in terms of cinema success, she is a hoary veteran; she scored a hit in Of Mice and Men a year ago. What makes Betty obscure is her preoccupation with her work. Unlike most cinemactresses of 22, Betty has a theatrical background, and she takes her acting seriously. Between scenes, she sits quietly in a corner or retreats to her dressing room to study French and Spanish.

Her career began eight years ago when she entered Manhattan's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating from the Academy, Betty understudied on Broadway, then landed the ingenue lead in the London production of She Loves Me Not. Soon she caught the eye of Producer George Abbott, who stuck her in Three Men on a Horse and five other comedies before Hollywood whistled with a fancy five-year contract. Currently on furlough, she is acting the lead in Elmer Rice's new play, Flight to the West, which opened on Broadway this week.

A small, plain, ash-blonde girl, Betty resembles anything but a movie siren. But she makes the most of her looks, has developed a technique well-suited to the camera. Her eyes are her principal dramatic weapon, and she can make a raised or lowered eyelid as articulate as a sweeping gesture. She rarely cracks her poker face, and this frozen countenance subtracts several years from her appearance. It also makes her look as if she were hiding some painful mental torture. Said one friend: "Until you get to know her, you think she's mad at you."

Chad Hanna (20th Century-Fox). Chad is a stable boy in upper New York circa 1840. When Huguenine's One & Only International Circus comes to town, Chad joins it as roustabout. He takes a fancy to Albany Yates (Dorothy Lamour), the high rider, but marries Albany's understudy (Linda Darnell). He slugs it out in a free-for-all brawl with a rival circus, takes over the ringmaster's duties when Owner Huguenine falls ill, quarrels with his wife, leaves her, soon returns in contrition. That is about all.

When Chad Hanna appeared in the Saturday Evening Post as Red Wheels Rolling it had the attraction of Walter D. Edmonds's popular writing. Producer Nunnally Johnson's screen treatment glosses over the banality of the plot, becomes a simple, artful study of an ordinary, unimportant man. For Chad it has. lanky, loose-jointed Henry Fonda, one of the screen's few leading men able to say "ain't" without wincing. Grey, grumpy Director Henry King, who usually handles Fox's spectacles, resisted the temptation to let his camera linger on the Techni-colored accoutrements of the oldtime circus scene, formed his screenplay into a memorable portrait of a man.

Good shot: Fonda and Darnell shyly eying each other at the wedding dinner while the tippling guests urge them to kiss.

Comrade X (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) takes care of the movies' left-over jokes on Communism and the electricity generated by the combined presence of Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr. Gable, as the footloose correspondent of a U. S. paper, finds himself involved in the political intrigue of the U. S. S. R. That also includes Miss Lamarr who strolls placidly through the role of a Soviet streetcar motorman intent on the cause. Scripters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer's picture of bungling and dawdling inside the Soviet is a lot less witty, and less tender than Greta Garbo's memorable film Ninotchka. But their slapstick commentary is a relief from the realities of headlines.

CURRENT & CHOICE The Bank Dick (W. C. Fields; TIME, Dec. 30).

Santa Fe Trail (Raymond Massey, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland; TIME, Dec. 23).

Go West (Marx Brothers; TIME, Dec. 23).

The Letter (Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson; TIME, Dec. 2).

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