New Foreign Films

Most foreign films, even the British crop, do not get wide distribution in the U.S.; but there is a current flood tide of good ones. Some of the best, roughly in order of merit:

Voyage Surprise (French). Writer Jacques Prevert (Children of Paradise') and Director Pierre, his brother, following Rene Clair, use their highly sophisticated talents on the style perfected in the old Mack Sennett and Chaplin comedies. The story: a slap-happy cross-country French tour, complicated by saboteurs, stolen crown jewels, and burlesqued pursuers. The picture has an air of reckless and generally happy improvisation. It fails to develop and pay off its comic points brilliantly enough, but it is thoroughly enjoyable.

Jenny Lamour (French). Winner of the Grand Award at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. A whodunit about vaudeville people. Excellent performances by Louis Jouvet, Bernard Blier and the notably attractive Suzy Delair, who suggests a Mae West who really means it. First-rate directing by Henri-Georges Clouzot. The best movie treatment of show business since E. A. Dupont's monumental Variety (1925).

The Idiot (French). A skeletal but sensitive reproduction of Dostoevsky's novel about a modern Christ. Memorable for the work of France's new idol Gerard Philippe, as Prince Myshkin, and of Edwige Feuillere.

Holiday Camp (British). Grand Hotel-ish comedy drama, featuring Flora Robson. Nothing exceptional, but nice easy entertainment.

Fanny (French). Marcel Pagnol on unmarried pregnancy, paternal love and the power of money and family. An old one (1937), presumably imported for admirers of the late Raimu. Slow, wordy, subtly complacent, yet often deeply perceptive and moving.

A Lover's Return (French). Louis Jouvet, a ballet master, takes vengeance on some incisively sketched provincial burghers. Intelligent trash, nicely done; pleasant ballet background; an eye-filling dancer named Ludmila Tcherina.

Furia (Italian). A refreshingly candid, rather steamy, essentially adolescent film about rural adultery, with good work by Isa Pola as the frankest movie temptress in years. Earnest, but overrated by those who think that the Italians (Open City, Shoe Shine, etc.) can do no wrong.

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