The New Pictures

Embezzled Heaven (Rhombus-Film; Louis de Rochemont) is a reasonably loyal German adaptation, dubbed in English, of the 1940 bestseller in which Franz (The Song of Bernadette) Werfel proposed a parable of modern man's fatal confusion, as he saw it, of the material and the spiritual worlds. The heroine is a dim-witted old peasant woman (Annie Rosar), who works as a cook in a wealthy Austrian family, saves all her pennies to educate her nephew (Kurt Meisel) for the priesthood. Actually the cook does not care a fig for the nephew. All she wants is a priest who will pray for her soul and make sure she gets to heaven.

After 20 years and many thousands of kronen, the heroine is flabbergasted to discover that her nephew never became a priest at all. He makes his living as a smalltime photographer and petty swindler, and he curses the old cook for ruining his life by sending him to a seminary. Shattered, the old woman makes a pilgrimage to Rome to do penance for what Werfel conceived as the sin of the century: the attempt to substitute power for love, money for meaning.

The film has its moving moments. The confrontation scene with the revolting young nephew has a slimy authenticity, and the cook's death is both sentimental and heartrending. The tour of Rome is fairly exciting, and some eye-filling episodes (Agfacolor) have been recorded in the Vatican. The main trouble with the picture: a bad screenplay that requires 14 actors, provides only two real parts.

Imitation of Life (Universal-International), after a quarter century in Hollywood's root cellar (the first film version of this Fannie Hurst bestseller was released in 1934), is still a potent onion. When passed before the moviegoer's eyes, it may force theater owners to install aisle scuppers to drain off the tears.

"I'm going up and up and up," cries Lana Turner, who plays the Claudette Colbert part in this version, "and nobody's going to pull me down." Sadly her admirer (John Gavin) slouches away, and Lana goes up and up and up until she finds herself in a penthouse with a famous playwright (Dan O'Herlihy), and all of Manhattan at her feet--in Eastman Color. How happy she seems, but how miserable she really is. "Something,'' the heroine sighs, "is missing." Certainly not one soap-opera cliche is missing.

So much for the career-woman question. But there is another hour to fill--plenty of time to solve the race problem too. So meanwhile, back at the cold-water flat, the Negro maid (Juanita Moore) is having trouble with her light-skinned daughter, who is yearning for the day when she will be old enough to leave home and pass herself off as white. The day comes, the girl goes, and the scriptwriters settle down to the point of the picture: an interminable scene in which the poor old Negro maid dies of a broken heart. Excerpts:

Maid: When my bills are all paid ' (gasp), I want what's left to go to [my daughter]. Tell her I know I was selfish (gasp), and if I loved her too much, I'm sorry, but I didn't mean to cause her any trouble. She was all I had.

Heroine (sobbing): Oh, Annie!

Maid: And my funeral ... I wanta go (gasp) the way I planned. Especially the four white horses and a band playin'. No mournin' . . .

Heroine: No! There isn't going to be any funeral! You can't leave me!

Maid: I'm just (gasp) tired, Miss Lora . . . awfully . . . tired . . .

With her last strength she turns to look at a photograph of her daughter. Smiling peacefully, she dies. The funeral takes place in a Hollywood reconstruction of the little old neighborhood Baptist church --an edifice that looks suspiciously like Westminster Abbey on Coronation Day.

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