The New Pictures

Valley of the Eagles (Rank; Lippert), filmed largely in northern Scandinavia, is noteworthy for a breathtaking sequence in which Laplanders hunt wolves with giant trained eagles. Almost as dramatic is a reindeer stampede in a blizzard.

The nondocumentary portions of an otherwise plodding British-made film involve a chase by a police inspector and a scientist after the latter's wife and assistant, who have escaped with secret parts of his electronic invention. Just in time for the fadeout, the fugitives are conveniently buried in an avalanche. This leaves the scientist free to pursue his invention--as well as a beautiful Lapp girl, who has been getting warm glances from him during the trek over the frozen tundra.

Anything Can Happen (Paramount] might be subtitled George Papashvily Discovers America. What does happen: 1) George Papashvily (Jose Ferrer), a Don Quixote in a caracul cap, arrives in the

U.S. via steerage from Kobiankari, Russian Georgia, and greets the Statue of Liberty with the only English words he knows: "How are you?"; 2) George shyly courts an American court stenographer*(Kim Hunter), and follows her to California in a motor caravan of fellow Georgians piloted by an ex-sea captain with a compass; 3) George winds up with both Kim and a California orange grove, proud to own a piece of "United States in America," where, as he puts it, "anything, anything at all, can happen."

The screenplay, by Director George Seaton and George Oppenheimer, has slicked up and sentimentalized the rather owlish, rough-hewn original story to make a folksy, affectionate film. As the immigrant who aspires to become a good American, horsefaced Jose Ferrer does his best job of movie acting to date. Eugenie

Leontovich, Mikhail Rasumny, Kurt Kasznar and Oscar Karlweis are believably human and humorous as toast-quaffing, banquet-tossing Georgians.

"When you set table for Georgians, remember, only too much is ever enough," says white-haired Chef John (Oscar Beregi). For cinemagoers, Anything Can Happen is a hearty, well-flavored spread.

The Man in the White Suit (Rank; Universal-International) spins a colorful yarn out of whole cloth about a research chemist (Alec Guinness) who invents an artificial fabric that will never stain or wear out. The result is top-grade movie material with the quality of good British woolen, the frothiness of fine French lace.

The plot thread is woven into an imaginative cinematic pattern of slapstick and social comment. The chemist's discovery alarms both capital & labor, which move to suppress it for fear the delicate balance of the market will be upset. Calm and sanity finally return to the textile industry when the inventor's white suit of miracle cloth falls apart, leaving him standing in the street in shirttails and drawers, a ludicrous and forlorn figure.

This spoof on a rather shabby world is stitched through with a wealth of humorous design by Authors Roger MacDougall, John Dighton and Co-Author-Director Alexander (Tight Little Island) Mackendrick: the series of explosions as the oblivious chemist experiments with his weird test-tube apparatus; the harassed high financiers embroiled in low comedy; the inventor walking off, Chaplin-like, at the fadeout, presumably to continue his single-minded quest for the magic fabric.

The role of the altruistic inventor who moves imperturbably through all the chaos is tailor-made for Alec (The Lavender Hill Mob) Guinness, with his sad, bland, foxy face. Deft sound-track embroidery: the rhythmical gurgles, bubbles, woofs and squirts of the test tubes that constantly point up the comic hubbub.

*Loosely patterned after Helen Papashvily, who, with husband George, authored the 1944 bestseller on which the picture is based.

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