The New Pictures

Come Dance with Me (Francis Cosne; Kingsley) concerns a dentist (the late Henri Vidal) who, during an important poker game, experiences a moment of tooth. Brigitte Bardot appears, leading her sore-jawed father. It is an emergency. Vidal puts on his white jacket, jams his mirror into the sufferer's mouth, then stares entranced at the filling--Brigitte's, naturally. Before long the toothache is even worse, but he, the handsome dog, and she, the pretty thing, are in love.

They marry, they quarrel, the plot commences: Vidal seeks solace with a luscious dancing teacher (Dawn Addams) who levers him into a compromising position. Then, as she tries to blackmail him with pictures, she is murdered. Did Vidal do it? Brigitte believes not, and loyally bounces about Paris trying to catch the real felon before the law puts the arm on her husband.

B.B. cannot be seen naked in this film, but there is a brief restaging of the memorable scene from And God Created Woman, in which Brigitte's nakedness, although coyly hidden from the audience, is reflected in the bulging eyes of her lover. In a praiseworthy attempt to reach a wider audience--some unrest has been reported among wives and girl friends dragged to previous B.B. films--the producers have included several shots of handsome naked men.

All the Young Men (Hall Bartlett; Columbia) expertly blends two traditions rich in cinematic cliche--the war movie and the fearless-denunciation-of-race-bigotry movie. Sidney Poitier, an accomplished actor so discriminated against because of his color that he will probably never be allowed to play a character who is not strong, sensitive and noble, is a Marine sergeant whose unit is chopped to pieces during a Korean war skirmish. The only officer dies, and Poitier takes over, despite a near mutiny by Paul Richards, a race-baiter who calls him "night-fighter." and Alan Ladd, a surly type who has little use for Negroes, and who is also jealous because he had outranked Poitier until a recent demotion.

As is usual in such dramas, the outfit's radio is bashed up. Poitier announces that despite its losses, the unit will follow its original orders, which were to garrison a farmhouse and hold a mountain pass against a regiment or so of Chinese. He makes a grim wisecrack about his color ("You'll be able to see me real good up there against the snow") and manfully leads his men through a mine field. Nothing that follows is very startling. The farmhouse contains the beautiful Eurasian girl (Argentine Actress Ana St. Clair) who is saved by Poitier from the attentions of lowlife enlisted men.

A Chinese tank crushes Ladd's leg, and guess whose blood sustains him during an amputation? There is barely time for a scene heavy with symbolism, as Racist Richards queasily watches the corpuscles flow from Poitier to Ladd. Then the Chinese attack in force. Poitier shoos his men and Actress St. Clair out the back door of the farmhouse. Refusing to leave Ladd, he grasps a BAR and stands off the baddies until his bullets run out.

At some point early in the proceedings, studio thinkers must have decided that the film as it stood was not going to make history or much money. The solution was to ring in two bit-players--Ingemar Johansson and Mort Sahl. Heavyweight Johansson sings a campfire song prettily in Swedish, and his two basic expressions (faintly amused and faintly serious) beat Actor Ladd's range by one. Comic Sahl, the only warrior shown who looks grubby enough to be a real G.I., very nearly saves the show with one line. He cheers his mates up with a few jokes during a lull in the battle, then remarks that, seriously, things look very dark. Turning to one of his buddies, he says with a catch in his voice, "If I don't get out of this, would you call up my wife--and my girl?"

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