The New Pictures

Rachel and the Stranger (RKO Radio) has been rushed into the theaters ahead of schedule because RKO hoped to cash in on Robert Mitchum's sudden notoriety. No one had a right to expect the movie would be much good, but it is. The first Mitchum film out since his arrest for smoking marijuana (TIME, Sept. 13), it turns out to be a pretty entertaining comedy-drama.

The setting is the Western Reserve, in the early 1800s, when the West was in Ohio. Widower David Harvey (William Holden) buys Bondwoman Rachel (Loretta Young) for $22, marries her, and brings her back to his remote cabin. He treats her like a servant and his little boy Davey treats her like dirt. When David's old friend, deep-woods Hunter Jim (Robert Mitchum), turns up, Rachel looks to him like fair game. He is indecently polite to her, openly courts her, even offers a better price for her than David paid in the first place. The wooing and wrangling all get remarkably open, and rather funny, until a pack of Shawnees interrupt, with flaming arrows.

Unconventional as everybody's conduct seems, the picture does not really explore frontier manners very deeply. If the U.S. backwoods a century later is any indication, even the best-beloved frontier wives were treated like servants in those days, and it never occurred to them to make any objections. But in its own terms, Rachel is an engaging and unpretentious show.

It is rare indeed that a movie can move in on the American frontier without million-dollar razzle-dazzle, chunks of pseudohistory, and an unctuous salute to those who secured our Way of Life. Rachel is content to examine a small domestic situation of no conceivable importance to citizenship classes, and to suggest the hard, lonesome beauty of the frontier and the way life was lived there. In other words, it is a better piece of history than most. There is pleasant work by Miss Young and Mr. Mitchum, and a skillful, comic, notably engaging performance by William Holden.

Luxury Liner (MGM) floats Metro's musical stock company in a welter of romantic complications which could be followed only with a navigation chart. The tangles are slowly and rather painfully unsnarled to the accompaniment of songs by Lauritz Melchior, Marina Koshetz and young Jane Powell, who is expected to carry the burden of a clumsy plot about a sea captain (George Brent) and his amorous passengers. Miss Powell makes a game try against heavy odds. The handling of Mr. Melchior, who also tries hard, is in the Hollywood tradition: two pan shots of enraptured listeners to every shot of an opera singer in action. Luxury Liner has also stowed in its cargo Xavier Cugat, his orchestra, and his miniature pooch. The ship was badly overloaded before it ever cast off.

Ruthless (Eagle Lion) is a temperate description of a financier named Horace Vendig (Zachary Scott). As the picture opens, he is tossing a huge fortune into the lap of a world peace organization; but his old acquaintance Vic (Louis Hayward) knows a thing or two about him, and the movie breaks out into a rash of flashbacks.

Horace started poor, but from the beginning he knew how to climb to wealth and power over the necks of women. Back in Cambridge, Mass., some 30 years in the past, he stole Vic's girl (Diana Lynn) and got his start in her father's business. He jilted her when he met rich, well-connected Martha Vickers, and began to make his way as a financier. Thus established, he cut Martha adrift and set out to break the trickiest operator on the Street (Sydney Greenstreet), using, as his ally, Sydney's bored wife (Lucille Bremer). Then he brushed Lucille aside like all the others.

Now, on the night of the big peace party, it looks as if he might steal Vic's new girl (again Diana Lynn). In spite of Louis and Sydney and Lucille, who are all present, and in spite of all the flashbacks, the girl finds Horace strangely fascinating and she seems willing to elope on his yacht. However, vengeful melodrama comes to bat, wickedness receives its long-deferred reward, and the world is made safe for doormats of good will like Vic.

Here & there, the movie has flashes of dramatic vitality and even of authenticity. Samples: the whole look and feel of Cambridge and Harvard, a generation ago; Horace charming a prospective father-in-law and a gaggle of stockbrokers; Mr. Greenstreet breathily declaring his passion for his low-necked, uninterested wife. But the long-suffering friend, inadvertently no doubt, finally becomes absurd and faintly contemptible. It all adds up to a strained, silly show.

Race Street (RKO Radio) presents George Raft as a Los Angeles gambler, William Bendix as a detective friend, and Henry Morgan as a crippled friend. The cripple gets brutally killed by "protection" racketeers. Detective Bendix, true to his trade, wants to hunt down the killers in lawful and orderly fashion. Gambler Raft, like all shady characters, is faithful to a code which scorns help from a copper. They argue this difference of technique, in a friendly way, until Raft's enemies, seeing them together, conclude that Raft is playing stool pigeon. That puts him in real trouble. There are also two girls, Marilyn Maxwell and Gail Robbins; both are easy to look at and one turns out to be treacherous.

There is nothing in this show that cannot be found in most tough-mug movies--and nothing that isn't passably entertaining, watched through half-closed eyes.

One Touch of Venus (Universal-International) is a free movie translation of the sprightly Broadway musical written by Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman* (TIME, Oct. 18, 1943). When a pretty statue (Ava Gardner) is imported into a department store as a publicity stunt, a kiss from a shy window decorator (Robert Walker) melts the cold marble into ardent flesh. The living Venus has arms and some interesting ideas about using them. Her timid swain is mainly interested in 1) persuading her to go back to work as an objet d'art, and 2) placating his landlady, his girl and his boss.

Director William Seiter extracts some dry comedy from the Milquetoastian terror of the little clerk and from Venus' languid, Olympian indifference to the uproar she creates. Dick Haymes has a turn at the songs and Eve Arden is good as a secretary who understands her wolf of a boss all too well.

*Both Broadway and Hollywood versions were preceded by a novel with the same theme called The Tinted Venus, by F. Anstey, published in 1885.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.