The New Pictures

There's Always a Price Tag (Inter-mondia Films; Rank) is a tasty example of how the French can cook up something out of nothing. This picture contains no more than the usual ingredients of the standard Hollywood thriller--it is based on a mystery novel by James Hadley Chase--but Director Denys de la Patelliere has prepared it to the king's taste. He tells the story of a wealthy drunk (Peter Van Eyck) who one day informs the greedy salope (Michele Morgan) to whom he is married that he is going to commit suicide in a few minutes. But if he does that, she realizes instantly, she will not be able to collect the 300 million francs for which his life is insured. "You will have only a few hours," he adds dryly, reading her thoughts, "to disguise my suicide as a murder or an accident."

The wife picks up the challenge, and the rest of the story describes how she almost wins her dirty little game. She seduces the chauffeur (Daniel Gelin). who seduces the maid (Jocelyne Mercier), who thereupon becomes a pliable witness to all sorts of things she imagines she has seen. In the end it takes some very clever police work by a marvelously grimacious flic (Bernard Blier) to bring the criminals to book--but then, come to think of it, what crime have they committed?

Hot Spell (Hal Wallis; Paramount) is a sensitively observed and breathingly real tragedy of family life. Alma Duval (Shirley Booth) is a nice, warm, middle-aged body, given to sentiment, running to fat, the kind of woman whose world is bounded by porch and kitchen, husband and kids. She lives in a pleasant, old-fashioned house in a middle-class section of New Orleans, and her man (Anthony Quinn), a virile, still handsome Cajun ("They always stay young and excitable"), runs a successful employment agency. The three children are good-looking and intelligent. The oldest (Earl Holliman) is a live wire who works in his father's office and is obviously going to make out. The middle one is a girl (Shirley MacLaine) and pretty enough to keep the porch glider occupied almost every night of the week. The youngest (Clint Kimbrough) is the serious type, always reading poetry and such, and probably headed for college.

As far as the neighbors can see. the Duvals have a happy home, but the neighbors don't know the rest of it: the husband keeps a girl on the side. Ma knows that something is going on, what with him out every night and coming home high all the time. The kids know, too, but they never let on to Pa, and Ma never really lets on to herself. "If you keep calm," she likes to say, "everything will turn out for the best."

Family gatherings are generally pretty uncomfortable at the Duvals'--the night of Pa's birthday, for instance. Ma bakes him a big cake with 45 candles and gets presents for all the kids to give him, but when Pa turns up he's in a bad mood, and grouches around and says to hurry up supper, he has to go out that night. At table he argues with the girl about her latest beau and gets into the usual back-and-forth with the oldest boy about the business. Finally, it all winds up in a big fight, and Pa insults the daughter's No. 1 prospect (Warren Stevens) and then stomps off to the pool hall with the younger boy, leaving Alma to face another of those long, long evenings alone, fooling around the kitchen, wondering what has gone wrong.

Pa has his version of that, and over at the poolroom he tries to make the kid understand. "Look, kid," he says.

"This whole thing, the obligations, the routine, it can all get to be like a trap. Now you take your mother, Billy, she don't understand this. Oh, it ain't that I don't love my family; it's just that -- it ain't enough. I mean, a man's got an obligation to himself, too, to be happy the best way he can. D'y'understand?" But how can a kid that age understand? Pa gives up and buys him a beer and goes off to see his girl.

That night, though, when he gets home, Alma is still up, and she sees the lipstick on his shirt, and they have a row, and it all comes out. "She's not cheap," he shouts back. "She's young and kinda lost. I'm her world. It's like I was 20 again, the way I never was, the way you and me never knew love could be like." She slaps him then, and he walks out, and the next day he comes back for his clothes. "I've tried; I've done my best," he tells her. "I've stayed and I've provided. Now I'm not going to stay here and grow old and die. I've wanted something better than this. You had the children, [and] you loved them the way you could never love a man." Alma doesn't understand, but she forgives. "Jack," she sniffles, "I'll be worrying about you." "Alma," he sighs for the last time, "I'm not your child." And she replies, quite unaware of what she is really saying: "Oh, yes you are, yes you are. You always were and you always will be."

The story goes on, and goes pretty far wrong at the end, but up to this point, in scene after scene, the spectator's heart is touched with recognitions. Moreover, the acting in all the major roles is wonderfully full and natural, and for that and for all the picture's graces of execution, credit is due to Director Daniel (Come Back, Little Sheba) Mann. But the leading virtue of this film derives from James Poe's screenplay, and ultimately from Lonnie Coleman's play, from which it was adapted. That virtue is maturity of feeling -- the rare ability to take people as they are and life as it comes.

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