The New Pictures

Man Hunt (20th Century-Fox) opens quite pastorally somewhere in the mountains of Bavaria. Through this silent, forested wilderness slips a renowned English big-game hunter (Walter Pidgeon). At the edge of a ravine he shrouds himself in shrubbery, peers across and spots his quarry. With meticulous care he fits a telescopic sight to his handsome sporting rifle, sets it for 550 yards, notes the wind drift, draws a cautious bead, and smiles a hunter's smile. Caught full in the sight is the left breast of the world's most wary and unstalkable animal: Adolf Hitler.

This sensational pre-World War II exploit is spoiled by a Nazi guard, who overpowers the Englishman. At Berchtesgaden the hunter's laconic explanation that it was only a sporting, not a shooting stalk, gets short shrift. An extra-special Nazi third degree fails to alter his story. Unable to get his signature to a faked confession that the act was an attempted assassination with the knowledge of the British Government, the Nazis fling him into the ravine and leave him for dead. He escapes to England.

From that juncture through to the finish Man Hunt slinks artfully along its melodramatic way. In post-Munich Britain, the hunter has to take to the woods to evade death by the Nazis as well as threatened extradition to Germany to stand trial for the alleged crime. At film's end, with Britain at war, the hunter, armed with another sporting rifle, returns for the kill. As he parachutes to German earth from a British bomber an off-screen voice warns that it may take weeks, months, years, but the hunter will get his game.

This cinemadaptation of Novelist Geoffrey Household's best-selling Rogue Male is a superb thriller. Loaded with excitement, suspense and terror, it is a happy joining of a wonderfully workmanlike script by Dudley Nichols with talented direction by Fritz Lang and first-rate acting by Mr. Pidgeon, George Sanders, Joan Bennett, John Carradine.

But Man Hunt is more than just a thriller. Without ranting or tiresome speechmaking, it states the case for Democracy v. Naziism with intelligent restraint. The conflict between Hunter Pidgeon and Pursuer Sanders, the Gestapo chief, puts a man of good will up against a tough guy who thinks that might makes right. Director Lang (M. Fury), thrice-wounded Austrian veteran of World War I and a fugitive from Nazidom, knows that conflict intimately. Because he also knows how to tell a story with a camera, Man Hunt has the kind of polished wallop that Hollywood likes to talk about but not so often achieves.

Abbott and Costello and Dick Powell in the Navy (Universal) is about all the title a theater marquee can take. As a title, it has one virtue: it tells the whole plot of the picture without wasting a word. As a gag it bright-lights a major weakness of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's second cinemadventure: the picture strains for its laughs.

In Buck Privates this dizzy pair of former burlesque comedians laid down a barrage of slapstick that was often agonizingly, if familiarly, funny. In The Navy their wacky, old-style fast talk gets snagged in the bony vocalizing of the Andrews Sisters, in the infantile attempts of Crooner Powell to get away from it all, in thousands of dollars worth of Universal props. Despite these expensive handicaps, sour-pussed Bud Abbott and outsized Lou Costello manage to resurrect many a guffaw for low-comedy devotees.

Sample Costelloism: he groans that his best girl has run away with a barber, when he gets a telegram saying, "Am taking the Clipper to Hawaii."

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