The New Pictures

True To Life (Paramount) is not true enough to be tearful, not false enough to be flat. It is a pleasant, rather cynical comedy in which Franchot Tone, Dick Powell and Mary Martin arrange an Anschluss between the never-never-land of radio and the hardly-ever-land of a "genuine" grey-collar family, Borough of Queens.

The Queens family gets into the picture when Link Ferris (Dick Powell), a radio-writer who has lost his genius for selling soap, crosses the East River in search of warm human materials. He stumbles upon just that in the person of Bonnie Porter (Mary Martin), a lunch-wagon waitress who sings prettily at her work. Bonnie's heart is so warm that before Link can say Yes-but-I-earn-a-thousand-a-week, she feeds him, takes him home, until his hard luck shall change.

Link is made to feel almost like one of the family. Pop (Victor Moore), an after-the-whistle Edison, gums up their first handshake with some ersatz rubber. A young brother, ghoulishly interested in medicine, counts Link's metatarsals and pleads for a dram of blood. A budding sister hopes Link will marry her ("Plenty of girls marry before they are 15").

Meanwhile, Link jots it all down as research, while Teammate Fletcher Marvin (Franchot Tone) wraps it up for the air, and the U.S. is swept by the greatest family-program in history. Bonnie is swept too: one way by Marvin, a chronic wolf--another by Link, who is much too worried about what will happen when the family hears the program to notice Bonnie's new dress. In the long run come discovery, anger and pain, a slash of real pathos from Pop Moore, mollification through the drunken delights of notoriety, and an ultimate regaining of everybody's sanity.

As Dick Powell, Franchot Tone and the other players lather it on, True To Life is likable, sometimes genuinely laughable. Surest laugh-getter is Victor Moore. His catastrophic demonstration of "breakfast made easy," is a cute enough kidding of rampant gadgetry to recall the alltime master, Buster Keaton.' Nearly as satisfying is the Sudsy-Suds jingle, as mooed by a male quartet. Its clinch line nails the prospect with: "It's de-lish-us!"

Hostages (Paramount) should have an irresistible appeal to devotees of dynamite, sudden death and Luise Rainer. The picture, a tortuous melodrama about the Czech underground, brings Cinemactress Rainer back to the screen after a five-year absence. It also notably advances the talents of prognathous William Bendix.

When a young Nazi disappears from a Prague restaurant washroom, 26 Czech hostages are jailed. Though the coroner's verdict is suicide, none of the hostages is released. Reason: one of them (Oscar Homolka), a Czech collaborationist, has investments which Nazi officials want. The magnate's daughter (Miss Rainer) and her quisling fiance set out to bribe his way to freedom. Their efforts involve them, unwittingly, in Prague's underground. One member of the underground is prepared to "confess" that he "murdered" the Nazi in order to bring about the release of the hostages. Reason: one of the hostages (William Bendix) is invaluable to the movement. From there on, the action be comes a fugue of double and triple crossings.

The plot of Hostages is complicated but it never turns into plot for plot's sake. Every new twist flashes a facet of the Nazi, quisling or underground political mind. These facets would flash brighter if all the characters were more incisive and the scenes moved faster.

Flesh and Fantasy (Universal). > An ugly girl (Betty Field) masks herself as a beauty for the New Orleans Mardi Gras, fascinates the man she is in love with, awaits with terror the midnight removal of her mask.

> A London palmist (Thomas Mitchell) reads a lawyer's palm, informs him that he is about to commit a murder. The lawyer (Edward G. Robinson), plays into the hands of fate (with a murder).

> A circus high-wire walker (Charles Boyer) dreams of falling from his wire toward a girl he has never seen. He meets the dream girl (Barbara Stanwyck), falls for her harder than the dream foretold.

These three episodes comprise Flesh and Fantasy. A dash of the supernatural, mild surprise endings and Director Julien Duvivier (Un Carnet du Bal, Tales of Manhattan) are about all that they have in common. But polish and humor make them fairly entertaining.

Best bit: C. Aubrey Smith, as a Mayfair clergyman, cheerfully commenting on the death of a rich old lady who has left him the jackpot: "Very sad, very sad!"

CURRENT & CHOICE

Lassie Come Home (Lassie, Roddy McDowall, Edmund Gwenn; TIME, Oct.25)

Swing Shift Maisie (Ann Sothern, James Craig; TIME, Oct. 18).

Thank Your Lucky Stars (Eddie Cantor, Dinah Shore; TIME, Oct. 4).

Watch on the Rhine (Paul Lukas, Bette Davis; TIME, Sept. 6).

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, Katina Paxinou, Akim Tamiroff; TIME, Aug. 2).

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