The New Pictures

Bread, Love and Dreams (Titanus; I.F.E.) is a pleasant little Italian-made comedy distinguished only by its star: Gina Lollobrigida. For U.S. moviegoers it provides the first chance to watch Europe's biggest sex bomb (TIME, Aug. 16) in an all-out explosion. The devastation is impressive.

Gina is cast as a peasant girl of the Abruzzi mountains, a sort of cross between Lady Godiva, the farmer's daughter and a merrily uncommon scold. The butt of some pretty rich barnyard humor as she bounces around the countryside on her donkey, Gina gives as good as she gets. Her ragged dress appears inadequate for keeping the weather out, but it lets in a lot of stares. However, a peep is all the village Toms get. Gina is in love with a local cop (Roberto Risso), and he with her. Police regulations, however, deplore such goings-on.

At this point a new police chief (Vittorio De Sica) comes to town. A middle-aged bachelor with a broad outlook, he makes a play for Gina, soon oversteps himself and falls in the river. That same afternoon, when Gina gets in a street fight. Chief De Sica takes his chance to clap her in the clink. But when he goes to her cell in the dead of night, Gina touchingly tells him that she is worried about her donkey. The police chief goes ruefully off to give the brute some hay. Gina of course gets the man she wants in the end, and the chief makes do with a lusty midwife (Marisa Merlini).

Actress Lollobrigida won the Silver Ribbon (the Italian Oscar) for her work in this picture, and in truth she throws herself into the part so violently that once or twice she almost throws herself out of her dress. She is perhaps unwise thus to spoil her own act by inviting comparison with a far more spectacular act of God.

Brigadoon (MGM) on the Broadway stage was a wee Scots village that time forgot. On the CinemaScope screen it is a multimillion-dollar reconstruction on the Williamsburg plan, with every plastic daisy on the village green set in by hand, the sheep marcelled like chorus girls, the cottages authentic from the dew on the thatch to the sweat on the hob, and even the cricket on the hearth selected for what sounds like a Sottish burr.

Furthermore, Brigadoon on the stage was a flash of tartans and gay Argyles; on the screen the scenes are smeared with a brownish heather mixture of Ansco Color.

And, sad to say, a good many sprightly ensembles have been junked so that the picture's principals (Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse) could strut their uninspired stuff. The story is the same winged little thing, however, and to watch it carry this enormous production is like seeing a butterfly haul a Bulldog Mack.

Two Americans, out for a shoot in the highlands, happen on a town named Brigadoon. One of them (Gene Kelly) catches fire from a local lass (Cyd Charisse), but when this arson is revealed to the parson, he raises a difficulty. Brigadoon and everyone in it lie under an enchantment. Only one day out of every hundred years can they spend on earth. At midnight the town will disappear until a morning in the year 2054. If the lover stays, he will disappear too. The Americans go sadly back to New York, but after a couple of weeks at the modern pace, Kelly decides that one day every century is enough, and catches a fast plane back to fairyland.

In all this Scotch-potch, Director Vincente Minnelli (Father of the Bride, An American in Paris) is a little unsteady on his feet, but when he gets them back on the solid floor of a U.S. barroom, he stands firm and delivers a raucously funny parody of life among the cocktail houris and their 5 o'clock shadows.

As for the players, Van Johnson, as the other American, is a total miscast. Cyd Charisse chores through some tiresome choreography without much zest. And Gene Kelly, an amiable and efficient commercial hoofer, makes another unfortunate attempt to be the poor man's Nijinsky.

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