The New Pictures

Night Song (RKO Radio) takes the cake, or most of the frosting anyhow, for fancy plot. A rich San Francisco music lover (Merle Oberon) decides that what poor, blind, bitter Composer Dana Andrews needs, if he is ever to finish his concerto, is the love of a girl whom he can't feel is pitying him. She pretends to be blind and poor; Dana falls for her, and his genius starts boiling.

His concerto wins a prize (put up, in secret, by Merle) and he goes East and gets his eyes fixed. Successful and happy, he begins to hit the high spots. He can't bear to return to his blind sweetheart. Merle comes East and pretends to be a rich girl who loves music and can see. He falls for her again but this time neither of them is happy, for both feel that the blind girl is being treated shabbily. At last Dana's concerto is played in Carnegie Hall (with Artur Rubinstein at the piano); he hears the music the blind girl inspired, and the love interest gets straightened out.

Someone the size of Novelist Henry James might have made something out of this tormented story; it is quite a tribute to the present, less talented company that they make it even bearable. Neither the stars nor Hoagy Carmichael nor Ethel Barrymore can make it better than that. However, either Mr. Andrews or his makeup man has managed an effective illusion of blind eyes. Also, it appears that those involved in this movie about music are at least musically housebroken.

Drab as it is, indeed, Night Song earns a modest but honorable corner in movie history on two counts. A piece of music is played straight through without cuts or that customary desperate wandering of the camera's eye which suggests that it hates music and is bored sick. And for once a movie set of Carnegie Hall does not look like a set for Dante's Purgatorio sculptured out of Ivory Soap by Norman Bel Geddes. With electrifying effectiveness, it just looks like Carnegie Hall.

Road to Rio (Paramount). The Crosby-Hope-Lamour "Road" pictures, in the opinion of plenty of enthusiastic cinemaddicts, can lead anywhere and go on forever. Their comedy is more verbal than visual, but any kind of slapstick--one of cinema's lost arts--is rare these days. Because they fill some of the void, these loose-jointed spoof pictures at least guarantee a lot of good laughs.

This time Hope & Crosby are stowaways on a Brazil-bound steamer. Dorothy Lamour is a wealthy maiden in distress, amply surrounded by Gale Sondergaard and associated heavies. Miss Sondergaard, a hypnotist, has Dottie all set to marry a money-hunting louse the moment the boat reaches Rio. One gathers that the menaces are trying to snatch a fortune by this deal, but when the time comes for explanations, Crosby calmly tears up "The Papers" that would make everything clear and says with a leer, "The world must never know."

There are several easy-hearted songs, some lines as quietly wicked as an icepick stab, and a few fine jokes. Good joke: at one point, Hope enthusiastically explains the rest of the picture: they'll Get-The-Papers and Stop-the-Marriage; "Boy, what a finish!" There is a frightful offscreen growling that sounds like a couple of nauseated tigers. Crosby, disconcerted: "What was that?" Hope, casually: "Oh, just the Warner Brothers; they're terribly jealous."

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