The New Pictures

A Yank in London (Associated British; 20th Century-Fox) is probably the most pro-American picture ever made outside the U.S. A story of the G.I. Occupation of England (circa 1943-44), it is not merely patient with the Yanks who swarmed over Piccadilly Circus like lusty, thirsty locusts. It is downright cordial toward the good-natured, homesick army of boys who whistled at the girls up & down Regent Street or Shaftesbury Avenue, jammed the pubs to drink up all the spirits in sight.

Ex-G.I.s who saw service in Britain will be grateful for British Producer-Director Herbert Wilcox's sympathetic understanding--until it becomes white-hot and knee-deep. Yank starts off well, but eventually a plain, ordinary guy from Arizona (well played by Cinemactor Dean Jagger) is hobnobbing with a Duke (Robert Morley), visiting the ducal estate, making eyes at the Duke's granddaughter (Anna Neagle). The girl falls head over heels in love with the Yank sergeant, decides to marry him instead of a suave, handsome British officer (Rex Harrison). The Duke smiles on the match. In the end, only the fortunes of war prevent an alliance which would have electrified Arizona and doubtless demolished forever the legend of a snobbish British uppercrust.

Discounting this excessive hands-across-the-sea mateyness, audiences will find that Yank makes its point, gives an amusing, revealing, often shrewd account of American soldiers in Britain, and of British forbearance during the only successful invasion of the island since A.D. 1066.

Shock (20th Century-Fox) is a mild word for what happens to a nice, petite young Army wife in this fair-to-middling thriller.

Waiting innocently in a hotel room to meet her war-returning husband, the wife (Anabel Shaw) overhears a violent quarrel between two strangers. She also sees, through an open window, its brutal & bloody consequences. When the husband (Frank Latimore) finally arrives, full of love and yearning, he finds his wife rigid and popeyed from fright. Unable to talk, unable to move, she is obviously a serious mental case, an ideal subject for Eminent Psychiatrist Vincent Price, who soon bustles up, brisk and professional.

As cinepsychiatrists go, Dr. Price is believable enough, even though he falls into thoroughly wicked practices at the end, aided & abetted by a beautiful, wicked nurse (Lynn Bari). But even the highest-minded cinepsychiatrists are never very believable, despite the fact that they are getting to be almost as common as the old Keystone Kops. In the last year or so it has been Dr. George Sanders, Dr. Sydney Greenstreet, Dr. Ingrid Bergman, etc., while assorted neurotics and amnesiacs have roved the screen in a veritable lunatics' picnic. In an unsettled world, nothing apparently so fascinates Hollywood as the wonders of an unsettled mind, especially when it inhabits a beautiful body.

What it all means, in terms of U.S. culture and Hollywood's secret soul, should make a good study for a real psychiatrist.

Report on Greece (MARCH OF TIME) provides a quick, sobering glance at the tragic face of modern Greece. A review of domestic problems and foreign pressures since the Italian invasion of 1940, the film offers no facile suggestions for the solution of either. The record of five long, lean years speaks eloquently for itself: desolation, inflation, civil war, Soviet imperial ambitions waiting behind the scenes, British imperial power parading the streets.

M.O.T.'s attitude is neither anti-British nor anti-Russian, but ardently pro-Greek. By implication, the film pleads for continuing UNRRA relief, increased U.S. sympathy and support, a free expression of popular opinion in the coming Greek general elections. Most eloquent shot: two small, hungry Greeks ratting around the trash of a city dump, pushing aside worthless, repudiated drachma notes in their search for something to eat.

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