The New Pictures

The Master Race (RKO-Radio), one of the war's well-timed pictures, dramatizes some of the problems which face the Allies--and the natives--in a shattered town in Belgium, newly liberated from the Nazis. An American officer (Stanley Ridges) is in charge of reconstruction an English officer (Gavin Muir) holds services in the broken church; a Russian military doctor (Carl Esmond) uses his political sophistication to scent out local disaffection at its sources.

Chief source is a Nazi ex-officer (George Coulouris) who, pretending to the occupying troops that he is an antiFascist, shelters with an unwilling bourgeois housewife (Helen Beverly). He also toys viciously, in his spare time, with her nubile daughter (Starlet Nancy Gates). His most useful dupe is an emotional miller (Paul Guilfoyle) who, easily led to believe that the Allies are eager to hoodwink and exploit his fellow townsmen, stirs up labor trouble and blows up a military jail. His most dangerous enemy is a repentant Nazi prisoner (Eric Feldary), whose murder he brings about and who, with his dying breath, denounces him to the occupation officers.

A shade too diagrammatic in its characters and plot and, like many otherwise laudable stories about democracy, a shade too sanctimonious, The Master Race is nonetheless an unusually pointed, serious, well-made picture. When the cornered villain jeers at his enemies, "You fall out among yourselves. . . . Victory is a nightmare to you. . . ," the screen play makes articulate a fierce and needed admonition to all men of good intention. When Miss Gates, cajoled in a sinister way by Mr. Coulouris, nervously binds and unbinds the hair ribbon of her precarious girlishness and stares with swelling excitement into her mirrored face, she makes clear a notably mature and unexceptionable bit of sexual drama. Better still is a beautiful, sudden moment in church when, at the utterance of the word "victory," the girl bursts into uncontrollable tears and hurries out.

The Princess and the Pirate (Goldwyn; RKO) takes shovel-nosed Bob Hope to the bloodiest corners of the Spanish Main in the spirit of unabashed poltroonery that has become his principal stock in trade. From the moment he pokes his head through an introductory title to announce that he plays a coward to the moment when he gazes apprehensively at a gibbet being erected in his honor and murmurs queasily, "Slumber lumber," Hope makes it clear that his gallantry is mighty small-caliber. When his beautiful co-captive (Virginia Mayo) on the pirate ship snatches away the protection of her wide skirt and asks him in the thick of battle. "Are you man or mouse?" Hope turns to the nearest mouse and asks, "Where's Mama?"

The Conspirators (Warner), fairly bristling with plot, compounds intrigue and counter-intrigue to the point where it shows a Nazi posing as an Ally posing as a Nazi. Readers of Frederic Prokosch's moody, almost plotless novel will scarcely recognize the adaptation.

Arriving in neutral Lisbon to join the Allied underground, Paul Henreid (alias the Flying Dutchman) runs smack into a lovely lady of mystery--Hedy Lamarr, no less. Love follows as inevitably as the revelation that she is the wife of a German legation official. When Paul, framed with the murder of a British agent, breaks jail and flees to a lonely village on the coast, Hedy follows, and proves her loyalty by helping to unmask the real murderer. This sets the stage for a midnight sailing, as Paul departs to complete the Britisher's secret mission, with Hedy gazing wistfully after him.

Even with the Maltese Falcon team of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre creating a suitably sinister international atmosphere, the picture adds up to nothing more than routine melodrama. Good shot: a bullet-riddled secret agent writhing on the sidewalk, remembering to burn the card that might betray his cause.

Marriage Is a Private Affair(M.G.M.), and one to which nobody should lightly pay admission. It does, however, restore Lana Turner to the screen after some 18 months' absence (a daughter). There are moments when boredom, adultery, too many cocktails, too much work and other marital liabilities get almost candid treatment. John Hodiak, Keenan Wynn, Hugh Marlowe, Herbert Rudley and Paul Cavanaugh bring to the film sincerity, vigor or skill which deserved better use.

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