The New Pictures

San Diego, I Love You (Universal), a cheerfully goofy little picture about a bad inventor who made good, is almost as funny as it is foolish. Much of it involves the efforts of lush Louise Allbritton to sell Father Edward Everett Horton's improved life-raft to Executive Jon Hall, "the most girl-shy millionaire in Who's Who." In the course of convincing him that she loves him for himself alone, she leads Mr. Hall through some unusually footloose footage. She gets him ensnarled in a brawl in a low-life barbershop which specializes in reconditioning shiners. She goads a Job-like bus driver (Buster Keaton) into leaving his dreary route for a gently berserk tour of the moonlit seashore. She takes Hall to San Diego's Zoo where, with very sensible leisure, the camera forgets all about the plot to watch a couple of engaging bears, hindfeet clasped in paws, rock back & forth on their bottoms.

The bears are probably the best thing in the show, but they get a lot of friendly competition from Miss Allbritton's four barbaric little brothers and from several expert comics, old & new. Irene Ryan, a virtual newcomer, does a cute, keen-edged little job as a room-seeking spinster who lands in the wrong house. Buster Keaton, one of the greatest of the silent clowns, gives the world-worn bus driver an aplomb, a strangeness, a depth of sadness, which all but turn the picture from its casual, slap-happy course into something far more impressive.

Aside from Mr. Keaton and the delectable bears, San Diego's level is well indicated by the bitter moment in which Millionaire Hall informs Miss Allbritton that of her father's raft the only part which survived testing was the chewing-gum with which she had patched it; or Eric Blore's unctuous self-introduction to his new employer: "You may call me Nelson." To which Mr. Horton earnestly replies, in the line-of-the-month: "Why?"

The Battle for the Marianas (U.S. Marine Corps-Warner) involved the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Marines in the capture of three islands. This new 21-minute film by Marine combat photographers--which contains less than 2% of the total film shot on the Marianas campaign--lacks the fierce, hammerlike simplicity which helped make With the Marines at Tarawa (TIME, March 20) one of the most powerful and moving short films ever made. But it has the same excellent directness, integrity and restraint; and it has some new qualities all its own. Every American who sees it will find new reason to be proud of his country and of a mature work of art as well.

The picture opens in a magnificent wallow of amphtracks as they leave their LSTs and head for shore under fire. One is hit and helpless. A plane, too, goes down. These are the finest shots of this stage of battle which have yet been released. Those which follow, ashore, are hardly less fine, made very close to the ground as marines, heroic in size and movement on the screen, rush across the open beach against everything the Japanese can throw at them. A hit man stops short, falls wounded before the lens. The cutting-away from such bits is swift, perhaps overtactful toward civilian audiences; but the difficulty and danger of such an assault have never been shown more frankly.

As the fighting ramifies, the film loses some of its first intensity. Restored on Guam, in still air near the ground, an American flag hangs quiet like a proudly sullen, resting bird. Inland on Saipan, tanks and infantrymen advance through slow-blown, elaborate foliage. The Navy's big guns shock the screen; an enemy ammunition dump sprouts a prodigious, elegant plume. Wounded men huddle in the lee of a withdrawing tank. Against a cave-riddled cliff, mortal with enemy fire, flamethrowers advance. In their curious crouch, their peaked faces, there is something that resembles the strange and malignant weapons they carry; they suggest a squad of exterminators, rather than traditional soldiers. But nothing in their demeanor can match the killing terror of the flame itself, or of its noise; it is the calm annihilating snore of a superhuman blowtorch. Another soldier has the face and soul of his weapon: bright-faced, brassy, vastly exhilarated by his work and perhaps by the camera, he has identified himself with a great gun; every time it goes off he all but breaks his jaw laughing.

In a long, steep, searing streak a U.S. plane plunges to earth, sends up its prompt tree of smoky flame high above the palms. Beside its high, disastrous bulge, from the top edge of the screen, in one of the great single shots of the war, a single parachute billows.

There is a sudden, tight silence. The Americans are awaiting the enemy's response to an appeal to surrender. Then, relaxing the silence, comes a straggle of Japanese civilians, sullen and fearful in their approach. A little later their freshly washed faces are gay to giggling over their riceballs. Some of the Japanese commit suicide by jumping from the cliff; the plunge is short, fast, stiff, feetfirst. Others of the enemy, as this film's admirable commentary states quietly, "fought to the end"; there is an excruciating nightshot of flame exploring a cave.

The film ends very quietly, with the crosses of the American dead, each bearing a name, and a recitation of those names, which echo all Europe and all democracy. As cross after named cross appears, the voice pursues its uninsistent roll call. At length comes a cross marked UNKNOWN. Nothing is said about that one.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Casanova Brown (Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Patricia Collinge; TIME, Sept. 18).

Arsenic and Old Lace (Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane; TIME, Sept. 11).

Wilson (Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Coburn; TIME, Aug. ,7).

Going My Way (Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald; TIME, May 1).

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