The New Pictures

Song of the South (Walt Disney-RKO Radio) makes movie actors out of ol' Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and de creeturs an' crawlin' things. Adapted with freehanded skill from the famed dialect tales of Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), the picture is a curious mixture of live action (70%) and cartooning (30%).

Artistically, Song of the South could have used a much heavier helping of cartooning. Technically, the blending of two movie mediums is pure Disney wizardry. Ideologically, the picture is certain to land its maker in hot water. Tattered ol' Uncle Remus, who cheerfully "knew his place" in the easygoing world of late 19th

Century Georgia (Author Harris, in accepted Southern fashion, always omitted the capital from the word "Negro"), is a character bound to enrage all educated Negroes, and a number of damyankees.

Nonetheless, for more than half a century, lovable Uncle Remus' quaint, shrewd, illiterate, good-natured philosophizing and storytelling have delighted millions of U.S. readers. The fictional figure is now brought efficiently to Technicolored life by Actor James Baskett, whose organ-toned voice, as the lawyer in radio's Amos 'n' Andy, first attracted Producer Disney's attention. Uncle Remus addicts are not likely to quarrel about the oversweetened characterization. With the exception of Baskett and two likable children (Bobby Driscoll, 10, and Luana Patten, 7), the live actors are bores.

The cartooning is topnotch Disney--and delightful. While playing fast & loose with the well-known personalities of Brer Fox & friends, the animators have kept a faint flavor of the old Frost-Conde-Verbeck illustrations. Perhaps Brer Rabbit's happy romps in the Briar Patch do not look quite as gay and wonderful in 1946 as Joel

Chandler Harris fans remember them. But any entertainer who tries to conjure up the good old days is courting tough competition with the sentimental, richer-than-life memories of his audience. Harris Fan Disney must have known he was taking that risk. Wise ol' Uncle Remus himself once observed:

"Folks is lots littler now dan what dey wuz in dem days. . . . My grandaddy say dat his great-grandaddy would make two men like him, an' my grandaddy wuz a monst'us big man, dey ain't no two ways 'bout dat. It seems like dat folks is swunk up. . . ."

The world premiere of Song of the South was scheduled for this week, with appropriate Hollywood razzle-dazzle, in Atlanta, the only city Uncle Remus himself really knew. The movie's success in the South, which unabashedly dotes on the good old days, is already assured. The film critic of the Atlanta Journal (the rival Constitution's onetime editor: Joel Chandler Harris) went on a special junket to Hollywood for a preview. He has pronounced the picture fully as great--if not anywhere near so long-winded--as that other Atlanta-premiered movie, Gone With the Wind: "There can be no higher praise of any artist's product than that."

The Chase (Nebenzal-United Artists) never runs quite fast enough to catch up with its good thriller beginning. A broke and hungry ex-G.I. (Robert Cummings) finds a bill-heavy pocketbook on a Miami sidewalk and returns the lost property to its gangster owner (Steve Cochran). Highly amused by such "stupid" honesty, the gangster and his henchman (Peter Lorre) give Cummings a job as chauffeur.

In the time it takes him to catch on that he is working for a murdering thug, Chauffeur Cummings has fallen in love with the boss's wife (Michele Morgan). How can the terrified lovers, surrounded by cutthroats, escape together on the night boat to Havana? In the better type of thriller, villains are foiled through the hero's ingenuity. The Chase's happy ending leans far too heavily on wrenched coincidence and pouncing Providence.

Robert Cummings, with purpose in his eye, is a more convincing hero than the plot deserves. Screen Newcomer Steve

Cochran should have a very bright future as a polished movie menace. Mile. Morgan, who has done some fairly suave acting in French films, gets the safe treatment Hollywood gives many pretty foreign imports: she is allowed to be modish, mysterious and monosyllabic.

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