LIGHT ON THE MOVIES
Hamilton, James S.
Light on the movies Along Came Jones—Gary Cooper has given himself a nice little lark in this independent production of his own, with Nunnally Johnson as writer to aid and abet him. Gary has gone...
...A faint but fatal flavor of comic opera that permeates most of the Italian characters—the blondined fisherman's daughter, Gene Tierney, fantastic as an Undine out of the sea— the unintended clownishness of William Bendix as the major's sergeant-—all these contradict the fine photography that makes the actual sunlight of Italy seem to be shining over all the scenes...
...The finale is a triumph of moving understatement...
...He sees Manhattan before any other white man, and finds his true love in New Amsterdam before he gets back into the 20th century again—in the Marines...
...But in spite of many stirring and moving episodes, the picture lacks too much of the bite of reality to be forcibly convincing, now or yesterday...
...The movie isn't so vigorous or affirmative...
...Most unfortunate of all, John Hodiak as the major, though he looks the strong and silent type, seems to be pushed around by events instead of grappling with them like a spunky, resourceful Yankee...
...Maybe the film comes along too late in the day to seem significant...
...Loretta Young also has a fine time...
...Most of the time the picture seems to be kidding Westerns, which is okay for everybody except the vast multitudes for whom a reliable, made-to-pattern Western is like a comfortable old crony...
...He is the old-time Western hero in reverse...
...But once in a while a situation gets a dramatic tingle in it which they can't resist playing up for serious tension and excitement...
...Family) * * * Where Do We Go From Here...
...In a crab-like sort of fashion the story works out that way...
...The incidental Army and Navy people are excellent, and a handful of the Italians...
...Anyway, Gary Cooper—though he is getting a bit old for such boyish antics—seems to be enjoying himself immensely, and a lot of the people who like him will enjoy him too...
...It is still the story of the U. S. Major Joppolo and how as civil administrator he won the confidence and friendship of the people of Adano, how he defied a military order to keep traffic (essential to the town's elementary needs) off a certain bridge because an irascible general had been delayed there by one of Adano's balky mules, and of how, before he was removed from bis post for disobeying that order, he managed to replace the church bell which Mussolini had taken away to be melted into cannon—-the bell whose ringing was the symbol of all the town's spiritual and social life...
...He is as fumbly with a shootin-iron as a gun-shy spinster, and his caustic sidekick (William Demarest) is sure that so much jouncing up and down in a saddle has done something to his brains...
...Gary has gone back to playing cowboy, with about - everything that can be crammed into a Western except Indians...
...There are no tunes likely to heat up the juke boxes, but there are a lot of laughs...
...Melody Jones, however, (the character Cooper plays) is only a very distant relative of the Tom Mixes and Buck Joneses who rode and shot of old...
...MacMurray is a 4-F (which is as fantastic as anything in the whole business) whose only wish is to get into uniform, but the genie's cosmic time-piece is years out of order and the first transformation lands him in Washington's Army at Valley Forge...
...This is all carried off in a sort of Hollywood Gilbert-<S-Sullivan style, with Ira Gershwin's lyrics topping the high spots...
...Family...
...has Fred MacMurray being whisked back and forth through America's past by a genie who pops out of a broken lamp with a reward of three wishes for being freed...
...But wandering into town just looking for a job he is mistaken for a really tough bad-man who has been terrorizing the region, and the wholesome respect this brings goes to his saddle-addled head...
...But— Maybe we have too strong an impression that the liberation of Italy hasn't worked out in the Joppolo spirit, so that his story (successful essentially, though he personally and ironically got caught up in the military machine) seems a one-man legend now, not a preview of America bringing democracy to a freed nation...
...Why shouldn't he live up to this new reputation, capture the bandit and the reward, and—and of course there is a girl...
...It meant above all trying tcr understand the Italians, knocking off shackles of oppression and fear, rooting out Fascists, and restoring the people's courage and self-respect...
...This hammering at the disappointments of the picture ignores a lot that makes it worth seeing, particularly a party at the fisherman's, the heart-gripping home-coming of released war-prisoners, the hanging of the major's portrait as a tribute from the town, and the return of the bell...
...In the end she'is'obviously going to be the sharp-shooter of the family/ {Family) * * * A Bell for Adano—When John Hershey's book was new it had a point that was made with considerable passion and conviction—"Liberating" an Italian town, by an American Army unit, had fullness of meaning...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 32
