The New Pictures

The Crimson Pirate (Norma Production; Warner) is a jaunty take-off on just about every pirate picture ever made. Burt Lancaster, swinging from a ship's mast during the credit titles, gets matters off to a gay start by advising the audience to "ask no questions--believe what you see," and then, with a wink: "No--believe only half of what you see."

Roaming the Mediterranean during the 18th century. Pirate Lancaster and his capering, cutthroat crew outwit the King of Spain's men on sea. land and even in the air--by means of an anachronistic balloon. There is also a subplot about El Libre (Frederick Leister), a democratic rebel, and his pretty daughter (Eva Bar-tok), who is loved by Lancaster.

Bouncily directed by Robert Siodmak, and photographed in Technicolor against real Italian settings. The Crimson Pirate turns out to be great fun. Lancaster, a onetime circus acrobat, bounds from balconies and cliffs, fights his enemies with fists, swords and belaying pins, swims under water, and swings from the ship's rigging with the greatest of ease. All in all, he makes a good claim to being the successor to Douglas Fairbanks as the screen's most athletic swashbuckler.

Beauty and the Devil (Franco-London Films; Arthur Davis) is a comical French version of the Faust legend. Writer-Director Rene Clair tells the story of Dr. Faust, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for youth, power and pleasure, in terms of satire rather than spiritual conflict. In this version, Mephisto is a merry old devil who assumes the shape of the aging Faust while the latter becomes a dashing young student. With the help of the beautiful young gypsy. Marguerite, the rejuvenated Faust finally triumphs over Mephisto in a happy ending.

Played in an imaginary 19th century principality, the picture is dressed up with lavish sets and up-to-date allusions to airplanes, submarines, germ warfare and atomic power. There are also a number of pseudo-slapstick chases--e.g., at the climax, Mephisto, menaced by an angry mob because his alchemistic gold has turned to sand, vanishes once & for all in a puff of smoke.

Michel Simon makes a bawdy, bumbling old Mephisto, whose bearded, grinning face constantly pops up at windows and peers out from behind shrubbery. As the young Faust, Gerard Philipe is a romantic figure. Director Clair describes his picture as "tragicomedy." It has neither the passion of Marlowe's and Goethe's Fausts nor the visual inventiveness of Clair's best films (Sous les Toits de Paris, A Notts La Liberte), but it is an unconventional and diverting treatment of a traditional tale.

My Man and I (MGM) is an oversimplified dramatic homily on the theme of good & evil. Good is personified by a pure-in-heart Mexican field worker (Ricardo Montalban), who wears a Homburg hat and checked jacket and proudly sports his newly acquired U.S. citizenship. When he meets and proposes to embittered Shelley Winters (Evil), a California wino who has hit the bottom of the barrel, she says cynically: "You and me and America, that'd be a threesome for a honeymoon!" Before long, Montalban reforms not only Shelley, but also thieving Farmer Wendell Corey and his slatternly wife Claire Trevor.

My Man and I offers some commendable opinions on good citizenship, but it fails to match them with good picturemaking. Repeatedly played throughout the action is the torchy Stormy Weather, from which the picture snatches its title.

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