The New Pictures

The Prisoner of Zenda (MGM) is the first time in Technicolor, but the fourth time on film, for Anthony Hope's durable 1894 Ruritanian romance. The Ruritania in this edition is as magnificent a mythical kingdom as M-G-M money can buy--outsize castles, royal hunting lodges and gargantuan coronation balls.

Stewart Granger plays the dual role of King Rudolf V of Ruritania and his British cousin, Rudolf Rassendyll, who are as alike as identical twins. When the king is kidnaped by his conniving brother Michael (Robert Douglas), who has designs on the throne, Rassendyll obligingly shaves off his mustache, rivets a monocle into his profile and steps into the royal breach. After much leaping from balconies, swinging from trees, swimming across moats, charging across drawbridges and assorted gunplay and swordplay, Michael gets his comeuppance, the king is restored to his throne, and Rassendyll returns to England, enthroned in the heart of beautiful Princess Flavia (Deborah Kerr).

This Prisoner of Zenda often stresses purple prose at the expense of red-blooded action, but all in all, it is a colorful version of a popular adventure tale. Granger gives a lively performance as both king and commoner. James Mason seems to enjoy swaggering through his role as the dastardly Rupert of Hentzau, and provides the picture with its most athletic sequence as he duels Rassendyll up & down Zenda castle. Lewis Stone, 72, who played the dual lead in the 1922 silent version, is here cast in a minor role as the cardinal.

The Turning Point (Paramount) dramatizes a timely subject: a crime-investigating committee, complete with television coverage. The picture's plot is less up to date: a hard-hitting attorney (Edmond O'Brien), in the course of investigating a big-city crime syndicate, discovers that his policeman father (Tom Tully) is mixed up with the gangsters. Further complications set in when O'Brien's chum, Reporter William Holden, falls in love with the attorney's girl friend (Alexis

Smith). By the fadeout, the syndicate has killed off both Holden and Tully, but O'Brien and Alexis manage to finish up the job together.

This is the sort of bang-up action picture that Hollywood often does well, perhaps because it has had so much experience at it. The Turning Point is a good case in point. Leanly written by Warren Duff, crisply acted by a competent cast and directed with vigor by William Dieterle, it is a smartly tooled thriller. Best scene: a tingling climax, in which a syndicate killer stalks Reporter Holden through a crowded boxing arena, trying to draw a bead on him from catwalks high above the stadium.

Everything I Have Is Yours (MGM) is a words-and-music movie in which the music bogs down in the words. The tedious script has to do with the on-again, off-again romance of a husband & wife musicomedy team (Marge and Gower Champion). When Marge retires to have a baby, she is replaced by sultry Understudy Monica Lewis. Jealous Marge has to take her troubles to a divorce lawyer before the couple is finally, laboriously reunited.

The Champions are a likable, talented couple who are fast on their feet, except when they are being tripped up by a molasses-slow script. Among the show's eight numbers, authored by a brace of songsmiths from Johnny Mercer to Johnny Green, is the old (1933) title tune, Everything I Have Is Yours.

The others: a 1913 four-reeler with James K. Hackett and Alan Hale, a 1922 adaptation with Lewis Stone, Ramon Novarro and Alice Terry, a 1937 production with Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Raymond Massey and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

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