The New Pictures

What Next, Corporal Hargrove?

(MGM) is a Hollywood-manufactured sequel to See Here, Private Hargrove, but it happens to be funnier than the original. The war, as it was fought by eager, incompetent Corporal Hargrove (Robert Walker) and cynical con-man Private Mulvehill (Keenan Wynn), bears only a casual scenic resemblance to real war. The France they trudge through is a mythical landscape. But Hargrove and Mulvehill seem far more real than many of the screen's dead-earnest soldier heroes.

As the picture opens, Corporal Hargrove and his muddy unit are trying to push a truck out of a ditch in France; when it ends they are deep in the same trouble. In the interim Hargrove has overwhelmed a French town by mere awkward charm, been energetically pursued by the mayor's vivacious daughter (Jean Porter), taken a number of Nazis prisoner and been elaborately swindled, along with Private Mulvehill.

The rapid series of funny episodes which make up Hargrove's war is strung together with just enough story to keep things moving--and just enough plausibility to keep them from getting out of hand. Hargrove's experiences (which are not actually Writer Marion Hargrove's but the inventions of Scripter Harry Kurnitz) have the flavor of a letter home to an aunt who is a good old sport.

The Seventh Veil (Sydney Box-Universal) is an English picture which sets out to resolve the romantic dilemmas of a lady concert pianist. It uses the relatively new medical technique of narcohypnosis as an excuse to use the old movie technique of the flashback. What is known in the trade as a "woman's picture," The Veil examines the frustrations of a basically good girl who is besieged by three far-from-perfect suitors. U.S. audiences may note that the psychiatric theme used in Hollywood's recent Spellbound has been more intelligently filmed by the British.

At first, Francesca (Ann Todd), a beautiful pianist whose fairly simple liking of men and pianos has led her into a complex state of emotional bewilderment, won't tell her doctors what ails her. It takes narcosis, hypnosis and a few bars of musical therapy to snatch the last veil of reserve from her tortured mind. As soon as the doctor's shot in the arm and soft talk begin to take effect, Francesca begins to remember a happy childhood followed by years of frustration. Her schoolmistress beats her across the knuckles; her bad-tempered but handsome guardian (James Mason) loves music but hates women; her first suitor, an American saxophone player, proposes marriage but lets her get away; a pudgy, pompous portrait painter merely proposes that she run off with him to a tumbledown villa in Italy.

The Seventh Veil is handsomely photographed, elegantly produced and acted with full romantic flourishes. It is a typical exhibit in Britain's current campaign to beat Hollywood at its own game (see above). The music includes the Grieg Concerto in A Minor, the Mozart Sonata in C Major and something called the Seventh Veil Waltz. Ghost Pianist Eileen Joyce and the London Symphony Orchestra perform superbly. But British moviemakers have learned more than expert photography from Hollywood: cinemaddicts will not be very much surprised to see at the end that Francesca's heart has really been yearning for True Love.

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