The New Pictures

Rhapsody in Blue (Warner) is a finer memorial to the late, great George Gershwin than Hollywood, after its tinselly tributes to Chopin (A Song to Remember) and Victor Herbert (The Great Victor Herbert), might have been expected to accord. All the more praiseworthy because it deals with themes often fatal to good picturemaking, Rhapsody manages to portray a genius without groveling awe, to follow a rags to riches career without wallowing in melodrama, and to picture a warmly devoted, richly accented Jewish family on New York's lower East Side without slobberings of sentiment or catalepsies of caricature.

Sonya Levien's original story of Gersh win's progress from a penny arcade pianola to fabulous success and tragic death has been adapted by Scripters How ard Koch and Elliot Paul with simplicity and reasonable fidelity. Newcomer Robert Alda looks enough like Gershwin and, with the aid of some astute photography, fakes his piano playing skilfully enough to be convincing in the cacophony of Remick's, a music publishing company, and impressive at a concert grand in Manhattan's Aeolian Hall.

Actor Alda never quite conveys the inward drive that consumed Gershwin at the age of 38, but the sincerity and as surance of the surrounding players focus on him a force and dignity that make the central character amply credible.

As card-playing Papa Gershwin, Morris Carnovsky blends humility, humor and awesome respect for his gifted son. ("How nice you write it out, Georgie, such black ink," he says, examining in uncomprehending wonder George's first musical manuscript.) Herbert Rudley and Albert Basserman underplay with moving simplicity the difficult roles of a retiring, satellite brother and a music teacher distrustful of Mammon's claims on his favorite pupil. Oscar Levant, as himself, needs no acting skill to project his practiced cockiness, but respect for his late friend in real life has given his comic relief performance an unexpected depth.

The inevitable love interest is prettily provided by Joan Leslie.

If Rhapsody in Blue fails to reveal in full the source and nature of the artistry that lay behind its hero's restless introspection, its music is ample compensation. With no story at all, this two-hour concert of Gershwin music would be well worth the price of admission. The shimmering ragtime of many a half-forgotten early hit, beaten out by an invisible Oscar Levant; the brazen love call of the Winter Garden smash Swanee, groaned in all its original agony by blackfaced Al Jolson; Anne Brown's superb soprano raised again in the music of Porgy and Bess; and The Man I Love given an added pinch of pepper by Hazel Scott's post-graduate left hand are only a few of the courses served up in this lavish Gershwin feast. For dessert and liqueur there is a spine-tingling performance of the Rhapsody in Blue, arranged, conducted and played by three members of the original priesthood--Ferde Grofe, Paul Whiteman and Levant.

Warner Brothers and Director Irving

Rapper can be justly proud of their production. But in any list of credits for the picture's resounding success, the top name should be Hero Gershwin's own.

A Bell for Adano (20th Century-Fox) has a crack in it. Thanks to Hollywood's passionate desire to please practically everybody, this third telling of John Hersey's story fails to achieve the honest anger of the novel. It also lacks the resourcefulness and verisimilitude of the play.

Hollywood might have given fresh clarity and vigor to the familiar story of the eager, humane A.M.G. Major Joppolo, who introduced democracy to Fascist-ridden Adano, and to arrogant, bellicose General Marvin, who sent him packing for defying the General's inhumane orders. But Marvin, who appears only once, looking not unlike General George Patton, is handled with such kid-gloved tenderness that he never becomes a real, hateful antagonist. In consequence, Joppolo's zeal for spreading democracy becomes a worthy but not over-exciting crusade that lacks the dramatic conflict which would have made it exciting.

Playwright Paul Osborn's Broadway version of Adano overcame many of the stage's physical limitations by the notably humorous, believable, touching performances of most of its minor characters and by the expert work of Fredric March as Joppolo. It was, nonetheless, episodic. Hollywood's Adano, despite an unlimited camera horizon, also manages to be episodic. Its views of shell-struck Adano are convincing enough, and its opening jeep's-eye discovery of the torn little town, with a mocking glimpse beyond shattered walls of a poster of Mock-Hero Mussolini, is excellent. But the people of Adano, despite a few good characterizations, are as un-Italian as so many Americans.

Hollywood's Major Joppolo is a likable young man named John Hodiak whose earnest performance suffers mainly from its inevitable comparison with the expert underplaying of Actor March. The girl Tina (Gene Tierney), whose role is no clearer nor any more necessary in the picture than it is in the play, is a remarkably clean-looking girl who has apparently cornered all of war-ravaged Italy's remaining soap, and who tries to give an illusion of foreignness by talking very slowly.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.