The New Pictures

New Orleans (United Artists), which deals with early jazz, tries hard to give its subject the love and enthusiasm it deserves. In many respects, the movie does no more than clumsily suggest the fine picture that might be made about jazz. An elementary history of the cellar art, New Orleans barely hints at the fascinating redolence and toughness of New Orleans' red-lighted Storyville, where jazz was born, and little of it is imaginatively filmed.

The plot: the king of Basin Street (Arturo de Cordova) is run out of town by the mother (Irene Rich) of a music-minded debutante (Dorothy Patrick) who likes him and the short-haired music played in Arturo's basement by Louis Armstrong (Louis Armstrong). Arturo and Louis move on to Chicago and finally to world success, which is excuse enough for everybody to kiss and make up.

Some of the people who worked on the film and acted in it plainly have a real feeling for jazz and the feeling shows up on the screen with honesty and warmth. The genial touch of Elliott Paul (see BOOKS) is often clear in the script; the Negro musicians--notably Armstrong, Singer Billie Holiday, Trombonist Kid Ory and Guitarist Bud Scott--act and play their music with freedom and pleasure. At the end, regrettably, jazz becomes "respectable"--probably the worst break it could get.

General audiences will be no more than mildly pleased with New Orleans; even jazz lovers may be let down. But the film does give Louis Armstrong a chance to reproduce some of his best numbers.

Moss Rose (20th Century-Fox) is used in this thriller as a murderer's signature. Every time sinister-looking Victor Mature moves on to a new sweetheart, the flower is found on an open Bible beside the corpse of the girl he has just left. Peggy Cummins, a cockney showgirl who wants to be a lady, blackmails Mature into taking her for a visit to his elegant country mansion. There she hobnobs uneasily with his jealous fiancee (Patricia Medina) and his magnificent old mother (Ethel Barrymore). She also tries to play detective, and falls in love with her main suspect. Next thing she knows, she is in line for the Bible, the moss rose, and the hair's-breadth intervention of Scotland Yard (Vincent Price).

After the first few reels, Moss Rose is not very mysterious, but it is sometimes exciting, even when it doesn't puzzle. Miss Cummins, a luscious little blonde, proves in this film that she certainly has a future in movies, whether she ever becomes much of an actress or not. Mature, who is generally effective in inverse ratio to the amount he talks, has little to say; he has the advantage of being under suspicion and looks like a million dollars in counterfeit money. Miss Barrymore, trapped in foolish lines and a none-too rewarding role, appears often to be debating whether to kid the daylights out of her job or to throw it, with a queenly yawn, at Director Gregory Ratoff's head. But the habits of a lifetime prove too much for her, and foolish role or not, she gets off some first-rate croaks and eyeflashes.

Repeat Performance (Eagle-Lion) is a melodrama about an actress (Joan Leslie) who kills her drunken playwright husband (Louis Hayward) on New Year's Eve. She wishes that she could live that year over, except for its climax. When she finds her husband alive and as nasty as ever, and everyone else carrying on as if it were exactly a year ago, with no foresight of calamity, she realizes that Fate has granted her wish.

Since nobody except a poet (Richard Basehart) takes at all seriously Miss Leslie's efforts to stave off the inevitable, her second chance does her little good. Some of her struggling in the emotional meshes is fairly interesting, and a certain tension does develop as the clock crawls for the second time to midnight of Dec. 31; but the picture is garnished with so much ham and ineptitude that it hardly seems worth the bother.

Joan Leslie is sincere as the unhappy girl caught in Fate's double-focus; and Mr. Hayward throws all his weight into his role as a noisome drunkard-husband. But it is hard to figure out why he isn't done in again long before the show is over.

The Trouble with Women (Paramount) is a topic that greatly interests Ray Milland, a professor of psychology, who keeps sounding off on the subject, with unflattering details. Teresa Wright, a star reporter, is assigned to work up some newspaper feature copy ridiculing the professor. She enrolls as a student, hounds him through bachelor's quarters and classrooms, and outsmarts his chilly fiancee, Rose Hobart, at the cat-&-cat game. In some bewilderment, psychologist and girl reporter fall in love. Typical side dish: a bespectacled adolescent, complete with outsized Adam's apple, who falls for Miss Wright. Best thing in the show: Iris Adrian as a stripteaser, uttering shrill little growls of self-esteem as she does--or rather, undoes--her stuff.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Perils of Pauline. Betty Hutton in a brassy, amusing biography of Pearl White, queen of the silent serials (TIME, July 7).

Ivy. Joan Fontaine as an elegant Edwardian housewife who kills to get on in the world (TIME, July 7).

They Won't Believe Me. Robert Young, Rita Johnson and Susan Hayward are respectively expert as a kept husband, his keeper, and the girl who doesn't get away with him (TIME, June 23).

The Web. A hard, neat murder melodrama, with Edmond O'Brien, Vincent Price and Ella Raines (TIME, June 23).

Possessed. Joan Crawford, Van Heflin and flashes of good movie-making do a lot for a somewhat vapid psychiatric story (TIME, June 16).

Miracle on 34th St. A clever, sure-fire comedy about a man (Edmund Gwenn) who thinks he's Santa Claus (TIME, June 9).

The Woman on the Beach. Joan Bennett, Charles Bickford and Robert Ryan cross each other up in Jean Renoir's sullen thriller (TIME, June 2).

Great Expectations. Britain's Director David Lean & colleagues do for Dickens what Laurence Olivier did for Shakespeare (TIME, May 26).

The Farmer's Daughter. Loretta Young as a country maid who runs for Congress; with Joseph Gotten and Ethel Barrymore (TIME, April 7).

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