The New Pictures

Slightly French (Columbia) is a tedious rehash of the old Pygmalion theme. This time the cultural spit & polish are applied to a low-life carnival dancer (Dorothy Lamour) by an egotistical Hollywood director (Don Ameche) who transforms her into a phony French film star.

The plot involves nothing basic that is not foreseeable in the first two reels. The script, however, has one pleasant surprise. Every now & then, Miss Lamour comes out with a roundly turned, neatly delivered snap of U.S. gutter slang which fleetingly suggests what might have been made of this story with more imagination.

Edward, My Son (M-G-M), starring Spencer Tracy, is an ambitious Hollywood effort to cash in on a British play which became a Broadway stage hit. Though it lacks the play's richest ingredient--the polished performance of British Actor and co-Playwright Robert Morley--it still makes a succulent emotional pudding.

Juiciest plum is Tracy's role as Arnold Boult (in the play it was Holt), a self-made, Canadian-born tycoon whose greatest pleasure in life lies in spoiling his only son. Young Edward, who never appears in the film, is actually an ingenious peg on which to hang a full-length portrait of his egotistical father. Boult's love for his son is really love of self; his determination to make the world Edward's oyster thinly disguises his own appetite for power.

To glorify himself and Edward, Boult stops at nothing. He betrays and bullies his gentle wife (Deborah Kerr), who ends up as a maudlin drunkard. He deserts his mistress (Leueen MacGrath), and drives his old friend and partner (Mervyn Johns) to suicide. As the movie ends, both Edward and his wife are dead, but Boult, still obsessed with the pursuit of self-perpetuation, is ready to begin a search for Edward's illegitimate child.

As Arnold Boult, Tracy misses much of the substance and savor of the role. His rages, his gaiety, his coldblooded urbanities lack the neurotic, compulsive tensions which made Boult what he was. Behind his big executive desk, Tracy is almost completely convincing but elsewhere--as in a sequence of sophisticated badinage in Miss MacGrath's sitting room--he is beyond his depth. As his sensitive but spineless wife, Miss Kerr reels in much of the slack of Tracy's performance with ease and authority. Except for some tasteless exaggeration of dress and manner in her final drunken scenes, her performance has an authentic finish.

All Over the Town (Rank; Universal-International) is chiefly notable as a starring vehicle for Sarah Churchill, onetime chorus girl, WAAF officer and stage actress, and second daughter of Winston Churchill. It is also an inoffensive little picture--which is fortunate for U.S. moviegoers who may be curious to get a close-up look at this charming chip off a famous old block.

As a reporter for a small-town newspaper, Sarah has an easygoing role which she wears with relaxed assurance. She joins forces, romantically and politically, with a young editor (Norman Wooland) who is bent on exposing a crooked housing project backed by the town fathers. Meanwhile the camera, true to the best British cinema traditions, is out to explore the quirks and quackeries of local society. Some of its finds--notably an overstuffed, off-key performance of the Operatic Society--are bright and amusing. Other bits & pieces have already been tarnished by too much handling.

As a sprightly lesson in postwar civics, Town is not as lively as it could have been. As a miniature showcase for Miss Churchill's slight but persuasive talents, it does all right.

Canadian Pacific (20th Century-Fox) digs up a job worthy of Randolph Scott: building a railroad to link Canada's coasts. Troubleshooter Scott squares his jaw against villainous trappers, savage redskins and the Canadian Rockies (in Cinecolor). With the love of two good women (Jane Wyatt and Newcomer Nancy Olson), he finally gets the trains running, but not until Canadian Pacific has dallied at every whistle stop on an over-traveled, one-track story line.

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