New Picture

This Land Is Mine (RKO-Radio), Hollywood's 19th film about Nazi-occupied countries, is also one of the more ambitious. It has the added attractions of Charles Laughton, who is an actor's actor, and Maureen O'Hara's cameo beauty.

More than the other conquered-nations productions, this one is essentially a serious play about individual ideological dilemmas. Those represented here are complex and not very clearly dramatized, and are apt to leave audiences dangling. For this fault, neither Writer Dudley Nichols (scripter of The Informer) nor Director Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion) is entirely to blame: they bit off more than they could chew.

Hamlet-like, mother-bound Albert Lory (Charles Laughton) is a provincial schoolmaster in a conquered country. He is in capable of declaring his love for his young fellow teacher Louise Martin (Maureen O'Hara) and of standing openly with his friends against the Nazi conquerors. But the betrayal and killing of people he loves goads Lory into taking arms against the sea of troubles. He commits a blind, almost reflex act of near murder, which is forestalled only by the suicide of his intended victim. On trial for the murder he did not commit, the morally outraged schoolmaster speaks out at length against the Nazis, and further proceeds in open court to reveal his love for Louise Martin. He is condemned, not by the civil jury, but by the enemy military commander, for opposition to the New Order.

The three-dimensional psychological portrait of Albert Lory not only has many indistinct patches, it also seems to belong in a French novel rather than on the screen. This miscarriage of form is not helped by hackneyed studio settings and self-conscious photography -- audiences may feel that Hamlet and Hamlet's descendants were not meant for Hollywood.

Acute directorial touch: a saboteur, who has wrecked a food train, comes home for dinner; when he takes off his jacket, he reveals a slight, honest detail rarely seen in U.S. movies: the stain of underarm sweat on his shirt sleeves.

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