The New Pictures

We Accuse (Artkino-lrvin Shapiro) will not be shown in any of the theaters owned by Hays-office members; that organization disapproves of the film. Its alleged reasons: 1) some of the atrocity shots are shown more than once; 2) the word "damned" is used (it is attributed to the Germans in the line "Let them [Russians] bury their dead and be damned"). Wherever the picture is shown, however, moviegoers will see a powerful and in some respects perplexing record of history-in-the-making.

We Accuse documents the Kharkov war-criminal trials (TIME, Dec. 27, 1943) with the force of a pile driver. It shows the faces of the three virtual nobodies, "typical Nazis," and of the collaborationist Russian, a "miserable weakling," who stand accused. It shows the hideous photographs and testimonials of the atrocities, or kinds of atrocity,* to which the accused plead guilty. Even more overwhelming are shots of bereaved women as they touch and caress the wounds and the frozen feet of their dead; or the restrained but colossal grief and passion for retribution in the faces of the men & women in the audience as they react to the German secret field policeman's admission that he is responsible for the deaths of "no more than 40" Russian civilians.

The evidence on the atrocities is convincing; so is the general culpability of the accused, confessing men. But U.S. spectators will be left wondering about Russian court procedure. (As Arthur Koestler observes in his new book of essays--see BOOKS: ". . . that those particular Germans committed those particular crimes was proved by no other evidence than their own confession.") And the extraordinarily full, frank admissions of the accused Germans are even more mystifying, to a Western mind, than the equally glib confessions of the Russians accused, some years ago, in the Moscow purge trials.

Moments as strange as this, in which the proceedings are questionable, make the flesh crawl; while the picture's flat actualities, in which truth appears unquestionable, make the head swim and the stomach turn.

Thrill of a Romance (M.G.M.), which is a gently feeble-minded title, suits the action to the words. The main thrill for bobby-soxers and stylish stouts is rosy Van Johnson, a sort of air-conditioned Charles Ray, whose boyish charm is honest and home-cooked enough to keep the men in the audience reasonably fair-minded while the women wallow. The main thrill for the pants-&-Paris-garter trade is Esther Williams ; she has the kind of body--displayed in a protean series of bathing suits--which you may dream of but aren't inclined to talk about at the breakfast table, and a nice, easy, assured personality to match. For music lovers, insensitive to such carnality, there is Lauritz Melchior, carnal in his own Falstaff-built way.

The romance is about like the thrills. Miss Williams, a simple swimming instructress, marries a rising young fiscal genius (Carleton Young), and they go to a Technicolored resort hotel for their honeymoon. They have not so much as gotten their shoes off when news of a big deal comes through, and the bridegroom, blandly unaware that life holds moments when pleasure really ought to come before business, whisks off to Washington. Miss Williams chastely consoles herself by teaching Mr. Johnson, a modest ace on furlough, how to swim with her in virtually connubial postures. They also get lost in the woods.

Even as friendship ripens into love, however, it is all strictly honorable. Mr. Melchior, a dieting great singer who has retired to this earthly paradise chiefly to watch other people hog down steaks, is very sorry about their purity. Between solos (Lonely Night and I Should Care), he befriends them with an artist's comfortably pagan advice, which in the end pays off.

Thrill of a Romance is as screwily wholesome, as all-American and, in the long run, as cloying, as a double scoop of strawberry ice cream generously garnished with toothpaste. But it is also, in its silly and highly calculated way, quite fair fun.

Out of This World (Paramount) had the makings of a satire, about crooners and their votaries, as funny as Hail the Conquering Hero, It emerges, instead, a rather labored semi-musical, worth seeing chiefly because Eddie Bracken can't go wrong, and for a number of good laughs. Good laugh: Bracken, twisting his face through some hilarious parodies of The Master, while I'd Rather Be Me and June Comes Around Every Year pour out of his larynx in the national-velvet tones of Bing Crosby. Added tickler: the expressions of Bing's four young sons (making their first screen appearance), as they try to reconcile what they see with what they hear.

Too much of Out of This World, however, is devoted to the multiple chicaneries besetting the career of a meek telegraph messenger (Mr. Bracken), who is discovered to have the voice that breathed o'er Eden. Diana Lynn, as the boss of a female swing band, gyps him out of his heart and most of his fortune. Veronica Lake, as a still more astute businesswoman, hires and rehearses the bobby-soxers who screech and faint him into fame, and gyps everyone in sight. By fits & starts the show is amusing, even sharply funny, but the overall impression is of wasted talents and a wasted idea.

* The film uses a number of atrocity shots which, while typical, were not made at Kharkov.

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