The New Pictures

Siege of Leningrad (Lenfilm News-reels-Artkino) pictures the cost of the war to Russian civilians. It is a somber film, calculated, to humble U.S. citizens who see it.

Siege, filmed by 22 cameramen in the first 14 of the city's 17 months of isolation, concentrates on life inside the city. The city's normal traffic slows to a halt as gas and power run out and heavy snows fall; Leningrad becomes a ghostly metropolis without moving vehicles, and masses of people trudge silently through the snowy streets, dragging their burdens on small sleds. When the water system fails, they chop holes in the ice to scoop water out of the gutters. They line up daily in long queues for their dwindling food rations; each carries off an allotment of bread that barely covers the palm of his hand. In their heatless homes and factories they work, eat and sleep in greatcoats, gloves and hats.

But the work of making munitions, erecting barricades and drilling the city's defenders never stops. The film has vivid shots of the lifeline that made Leningrad's resistance possible: the path across frozen Lake Ladoga, where railroad trains run on temporary tracks and trucks travel until late in the spring across the rotten ice. The most eloquent shots are those of the people: in Leningrad's streets death is so commonplace that no one turns to look at a small boy dragging a sled with a coffin on it.

The Hard Way (Warner) is the old Hollywood story about a harpy who claws her way up the ladder to fame, riches and disaster. The plot, a corny tale of heartbreak and backstabbing in the show business, has almost no surprises. But thanks to the adept treatment of this routine material, The Hard Way is a fine film, one of the best thus far in 1943.

It begins in a squalid Pennsylvania mining town. Helen Chernen (Ida Lupino), trapped as the wife of a grimy animal who sleeps in his long underwear, schemes to escape from it all with her pretty, teen-age sister-in-law Katherine (Joan Leslie). The arrival of a team of vaudeville hoofers, Runkel (Jack Carson) & Collins (Dennis Morgan), provides the opportunity. When the hoofers entrain for the next stop, the girls are members of the party--Katherine as Runkel's wife and Helen as boss.

Thereafter, hard-bitten Helen Chernen, capable of any chicanery, arranges destiny with a stilettoed hand. She breaks up Runkel & Collins, installs Katherine as Runkel's dancing partner, then jettisons Runkel to get the girl a chance on Broadway. Next she destroys their marriage, drives Runkel to suicide, finally soars to a champagne triumph on Katherine's conquests as a musicomedy star. But for Katherine the corruption of success, at first intoxicating, finally becomes too gory; she runs off with the man Helen loves. Nothing is left for Helen but the river.

That this depressing story remains above-average entertainment is mainly due to incisive writing (by Scenarists Daniel Fuchs and Peter Viertel), and to direction by Vincent Sherman that results in honest, intelligent acting by an excellent cast. Jack Carson's job as a simpleminded, big-hearted hoofer is masterly; Dennis

Morgan gives a tight performance as a bush-league deep thinker, and versatile Joan Leslie romps attractively through a difficult part. But top acting honors go to Ida Lupino, who plays the most hateful jade since Bette Davis in The Little Foxes.

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