The New Pictures

River of No Return (20th Century-Fox) has Marilyn Monroe, CinemaScope, Technicolor, a lovable youngster, Indians, some handsome mountain scenery, and just about every other tested box-office ingredient that Writer Frank Fenton and Director Otto Preminger could think of. Actually, all Preminger needed for a successful movie was Marilyn to sing and hip-swing her way through honky-tonks, cascading rapids and woodland groves.

The plot is best summed up by a recurrent phrase in the picture: "The country's alive with Indians." Through this red-man-infested landscape moves Rory Calhoun (delicately described as Marilyn's fiance), carrying a mining claim won in a card game, and astride a horse stolen from honest Farmer Robert Mitchurn. After Rory, on a raft, come Widower Mitchum, his ten-year-old son (Tommy Rettig) and Actress Monroe. In making the trek, Mitchum wrestles in turn with a mountain lion, a knife-wielding badman, several Indians, and Marilyn. She gives him by far the toughest scrap. Mitchum also plays a scene calculated to set up a wolf-call cacophony from one end of the nation to the other: he sternly tells a drenched Marilyn to get undressed, and then gives her a brisk rubdown while, the Monroe epidermis is covered only by a blanket.

The one thing likely to take moviegoers' eyes off Marilyn is the other scenery--truly spectacular wide-screen vistas of mountains, gorges and a torrential river, filmed in Canada's Banff and Jasper National Parks. Director Preminger often contrives to let the audience enjoy everything there is to see by having Marilyn up front and center, looking winsomely at the landscape. The dialogue is sicklied o'er by a philosophic glaze, and Marilyn's reading of some of her more majestic lines has inspired studio publicity men to trumpet the claim that she "unveils a deep emotional insight and a tender dramatic gift never before displayed." Probably much more to the point is Marilyn's own comment on the satisfactions of co-starring with He-Man Mitchum: "It's wonderful to play opposite a guy you can't pick up and throw across the room."

Miami Story (Columbia). "No matter how much you take off," says a hard female voice from the dark side of the room, "my gun will keep you covered." Mick Flagg (Barry Sullivan), ex-gangster, stops undressing, strolls casually toward the mysterious intruder (Beverly Garland) and lights a cigarette. Next instant, he flips the match at her eyes, leaps forward, grabs her gun, slaps her hard across the face and drags her to the light. She is beautiful. It is love at first fight.

In short, Miami Story is just another gangstereotype--with one modern improvement. Mobster Flagg, a little Caesar who has abdicated in favor of law & order, gets evidence against his old friends with the latest thing in eavesdropping. Not content with keyhole-squint and transom-peer, with tape recorder or even wiretap. Flagg triumphantly secretes in the walls of the villain's office a complete closed-channel television transmitter.

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