The New Pictures

Passionate Summer (Marceau; Kingsley International) is the kind of plain-brown-wrapper movie that could have been authored by an unlikely collaboration of Henry Miller, in his heyday, and the late Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey in his. What happens when a carefree, handsome studhorse of a man strolls into the lives of three sex-starved females who run an isolated goat farm in the French Alps? Going far beyond love, or even mere lust, Passionate Summer presents something of a heterosexual explosion.

Angelo (Raf Vallone) is a lusty Italian peasant, but no cad; for him, sex is a virtually impersonal bodily function, and he is delighted to find himself in the presence of three attractive targets: Agatha (Madeleine Robinson), the young widow of Angelo's best friend in a prisoner of war camp; her burgeoning teenage daughter Sylvia (Dany Carrel); her sulky sister-in-law Pia (Magali Noel), a sensuous charmer with a body like molded quicksand. Angelo is not thinking of farm labors when he eyes the ladies tauntingly and husks: "You don't have a man?" Perceiving that this will doubtless blossom into an intimate family affair, he also assures them: "How could I love one of you more than another?" His first objective is the widow Agatha, and she is more than willing. Naturally, Pia grows annoyed, so Angelo appeases her by enrolling her in his quaint little harem. Next: the girl Sylvia. The three raging libidos soon turn their energies to jealousy, then hate, and finally, Angelo's comeuppance.

This sex-driven movie, transliteration of a play by Italy's late, earnest Ugo Betti, would be far better if it gave its characters time to indulge in a few other natural functions, eating and sleeping, for instance. The English subtitles are as unnecessary to the story as its French dialogue. All is really said in sign language, and it cannot be mistaken.

The Young Don't Cry (Columbia), but Sal Mineo's lustrous brown eyes get mighty moist in this movie while he fends off all manner of ruffians, twerps and smart alecks. As a 17-year-old paragon of adolescence in a Georgia orphanage, "Big Fella" Mineo stoutly defends the "little fellas" from harm, sturdily resists the temptations and blandishments of a bevy of Bad Examples. In hammering out his selfless philosophy of life, Sal learns through bitter experience to reject the cynical green applesauce of an opportunistic main-chancer (Thomas Carlin), and to sneer at the diesel-crass plutocracy of a trucking tycoon (Gene Lyons), who is the orphanage's most successful alumnus.

The movie hints that deep similarities exist between the cozy orphanage and a Dachau-like state prison near by. Sal suddenly finds himself up to his downy cheeks in an escape engineered by two desperate jailbirds, whom he met and befriended while they were sweating over some local ditchdigging. Impressed into helping them make a swampy getaway, Sal gradually gets into his hardening skull the idea that no bad man is all bad. The corollary: some of society's watchdogs (such as sadistic Prison Warden J. Carrol Naish) and false heroes (the millionaire trucker) can be absolutely no good.

In making its turbid case for the golden rule, this film preaches with the earnestness of a morality play, but its melodramatic heights seldom attain those of Little Orphan Annie. Wallowing Methodically in his Slough of Despond, Sal Mineo--pouting, simpering, and rolling his eyeballs on the rocky road to manhood--is singularly unconvincing as a meek and mild sort of Michelangelo angel who is all set to inherit the earth.

Tip on a Dead Jockey (MGM) offers a transposed version (from Paris to Madrid) of Irwin Shaw's story about an ex-Air Force pilot grown wary of the troubled air. As an operational major in Korea, Robert Taylor sent many a comrade off to flaming death; in his rationalized pretense that his lost pals were never even born, he has somehow come to believe that his own life is pointless and worthless. He is not exactly a coward, but he has lost all willingness to risk his guts in the air. With a lucrative smuggling job as its pivot, the scenario spins lengthily around Taylor's prospects of carrying off the chore for a slimy international slob (Martin Gabel). The issue: Will Airman Taylor permit himself to be airborne long enough to lug a trunkful of British banknotes out of a frozen sterling area? It seems an easy way to pick up $25,000.

Depicting a man who has lost track of himself, the movie occasionally catches up with Taylor. The ramifications of cowardice cannot be treated quite so lightly. On his side are his devoted wife (Dorothy Malone) and his loyal Korean buddy (Jack Lord). Taylor shuffles about Madrid in grim seizures of fear, but they are never convincingly documented. In the end, when he has proved to himself that he can take a cloud or leave it, he wakes up to find himself whole again. The adventure is grand; the mission is accomplished with some frightening sideslips. But the movie fails to hurdle its main psychological barrier--the process of the distillation of fear into the essence of courage.

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