The New Pictures

Caesar and Cleopatra (J. Arthur Rank-United Artists) cost the British $3 to $5 million (by pressagent accounting), and will be peddled in the U.S. as a spectacle. As spectacle, this Gabriel Pascal production does itself proud--from stupendous Technicolor replicas of Ptolemaic Egypt down to intimate studies of the young Queen's decolletage. But all the munificent movie art does not conceal art of a rarer, riper kind: the dialogue for this superspectacle was written by a great master of prose and of wit, George Bernard Shaw. By & large, the playing is worthy of the dialogue.

In historical fact, Caesar and Cleopatra lived together in the most literal sense of the phrase. Cleopatra bore him a son, Caesarion, who was promising enough to be assassinated eventually by order of Octavian. In Shaw's charming fiction, they warily skirt the quagmires of passion while the aging political genius, with rueful avuncular irony, helps to convert the puppet Queen from a fierce child into a woman, ripe for Mark Antony's plucking.

It has become fashionable to think of Shaw as a little musty and more than a little talkative, but audiences are likely to wonder whether it is possible to get enough movie talk as good as this. Caesar and Cleopatra was written nearly 50 years ago, but as a comedy of youth and age it is an enduring delight; it is also a fascinating, vividly contemporary study of leadership. Shaw has examined the complexities of cynicism and benevolence, megalomania and selflessness, intuitiveness and hard reason, passive resistance and calm brutality, which combined to make the soldier-statesman. His portrait shows Caesar to be a man as far beyond mere knowledgeability as a Hitler or a Stalin--and considerably more civilized.

Shaw once wrote that "Caesar is greater off the battlefield than on it." Claude Rains's excellent performance makes that observation valid. As for Vivien Leigh, probably few actresses could have drawn as much fun, understanding and beauty out of Shaw's exquisite, violent, brilliant baby Queen. There are other excellent jobs: Flora Robson as Ftatateeta, Cleopatra's savage nurse; Anthony Harvey as her petulant, bewildered little brother; Francis L. Sullivan as the corrupt councilor, and Stewart Granger as Apollodorus.

Some of the experts whose job it is to hawk this film to U.S. moviegoers shook their heads mournfully after casing the well-set-up, well-exposed Granger torso. If Cleopatra, they decided, had only given Apollodorus the suggestion of a royal high sign for a command performance--no matter how far off-screen--it would have given the picture Sex. However that may be, and however well it makes out as spectacle, Caesar and Cleopatra is vintage Shaw: a wise and winning comedy, beautifully played.

Notorious (RKO Radio) is a top-drawer thriller, as might be expected with all the top-drawer talent involved; Alfred Hitchcock directed Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant through the Ben Hecht yarn.

The war is over now, but in certain South American capitals, determined Nazis are still plotting and spying. However this state of affairs may affect U.S. security, it is a godsend to moviegoing fans of Alfred Hitchcock, who is always at his best with spies. Thriller-expert Hitchcock takes his time about uncorking his thrills. Moving at a casual, almost leisurely pace, he waits until he is certain of a hard, tight grip on his audience. Then he runs away with it.

U.S. Secret Agents Bergman and Grant fly down to Rio and look into the suspicious activities of a German-controlled cartel. They barely have time to discover their love for each other when patriotism intervenes and demands that Ingrid marry Boss Nazi Claude Rains. Marriage lands her right into a Nazi nest and the threat of slow poison in her morning coffee. If anyone in the audience is not sitting up in his theater chair by this time he is Hitchcock-proof.

Besides making audiences uneasy about the safety of hero and heroine, this picture may also make people a bit uneasy about the efficiency of U.S. intelligence services. The inept way G-Agents Bergman and Grant fumble around with Mr. Rains's key ring and his cellar, clumsily knocking over bottles of uranium samples, may make audiences conclude that the pair would have tough going with the simplest civil service exam. But with Messrs. Hecht and Hitchcock on their side, no mere Nazi is quick enough for them at the finish.

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