The New Pictures

Enchantment (Goldwyn; RKO Radio), a film version of Rumer Godden's novel Take Three Tenses, is a tear-squeezer which shuttles back & forth between blitz-time London and the gay old '90s. The link is an aged general (David Niven) come home to dream--and to warn the young 'uns against making the same mistakes he did. This leads to so many flashbacks that Enchantment might have sent its audiences into St. Vitus' dance, had it not been for Cameraman Gregg Toland, who completed the picture a few weeks before he died (TIME, Oct. 11).

Toland's subtle transition shots make the jumps seem as smooth as cold cream. Sample: in the '90s, Niven's older sister (Jayne Meadows) stands in the hallway of their house holding a large brass key. He has just sworn never to touch it again (or enter the house) as long as she lives. The camera narrows its focus to the key; the key turns in a lock--in the hand of Niven's grandniece (Evelyn Keyes) half a century later.

The livelier passages of this tale are all in the '90s and have to do with waltzes and schottisches, gay guardsmen and ruffly romance. When the old general harrumphs his warnings to his niece, the advice seems wasted on a relatively insipid pair (Keyes and Farley Granger). Niven and his lost sweetheart (Teresa Wright) steal the show so completely that in the end it becomes a plea for the past tense, on almost any terms.

The Paleface (Paramount) is a Technicolor reminder that Bob Hope spent years in vaudeville and on Broadway before he faded to a mere voice on the air. In this burlesque horse opera he adds gestures, double takes, struts and muggery to his redoubtable radio timing. The result is a picture that gives the fans more good Hope than they've had since his film life was first cluttered with crooners, sarongs, the Road-this-a-way and the Road-that-a-way.

There is very little plot to get in the way of the nonsense. Two-gun Cowgirl Calamity Jane (Jane Russell) is released from a jail sentence to track down some low characters who are smuggling rifles and firewater to the Indians. When three of these gimlet-eyed fellows trap her in a bath house (where she keeps her guns slung to her garters), she plugs them and larrups away with a hunt-and-peck dentist, Dr. Painless Peter Potter (Hope). She marries Painless for the sake of appearances, then gets rather fond of him. Whenever he gets in a jam, Calamity stands patiently behind him and plugs his enemies. In time, this leads to a scene that Hope plays with all the zest of a bear in a honey tree: Painless, convinced that he is the town tough guy, swaggering through the saloons in search of the fellow who really is tough.

In relatively quiet stretches, the script offers Indian massacres, gun fights, runaway chases and Hope mooing the Hit Parade leader, Buttons and Bows.

Words and Music (MGM) has just the right proportions of garlicky bad taste and more than Oriental splendor which (plus Technicolor) add up to a Hollywood dream of heaven--an M-G-M supermusical. Somewhere in this mixture-as-before is a version of the careers of Richard Rodgers and the late Lorenz Hart, preserved from too much resemblance to reality throughout.

Outrageously cast as Lyricist Hart, Mickey Rooney runs his own narrow gamut between the brash and the maudlin, tottering finally to a ludicrous death on a rain-pelted sidewalk. As Rodgers, young Tom Drake looks and behaves like a well-mannered New Haven undergraduate. Between them, they hold up a limp plot line on which M-G-M has hung 22 Rodgers & Hart tunes clothespinned by so many stars that publicity protocol lists them alphabetically (June Allyson, Perry Como, Judy Garland, Lena Home, Gene Kelly, Ann Sothern).

Not only does Words and Music make the song writers' lives into a dull and silly story, but it muffs the chance afforded by their songs to evoke a flavorful period; it all smacks obviously of Hollywood sound stage, 1948. Nor does the music itself always get more than a mediocre performance. (Notable exceptions: June Allyson singing Thou Swell; Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen dancing Slaughter on Tenth Avenue).

But the Rodgers & Hart wizardry gets the ultimate, if unconscious, tribute. Against all the odds that money could buy, the tunes are still mighty pretty and the words are mighty cute.

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