The New Pictures

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Universal), from the British thriller of the same name,* is told in a despairing cinematic monotone almost as dismal as its title. A beached merchant sailor (Burt Lancaster) cracks the skull of a London pubkeeper, for no very good reason, and escapes the bobbies by climbing into the bedroom of a prim nurse (Joan Fontaine). With more kindness than gumption, she concludes that a young man so desperately weary is worth protecting. From the moment Nurse Fontaine makes this silly decision, her fate is hitched to the criminal's inevitable decline & fall. So is that of Robert Newton, a sinister cockney witness to the murder, who finally gets done in with a pair of scissors.

Since Lancaster's addiction to violence is clearly leading him to the gallows, the suspense in Kiss the Blood is not very keen. These characters are plainly headed for a bad end, and the only question is: How bad? Who, eventually, will get the most blood on whose hands?

In the novel, the unhappy couple finally ended up safe somewhere outside England, the heroine's face scarred beyond recognition. Movie morals require that they end up in the hands of the law.

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (Paramount), a smooth-surfaced, creaky-jointed melodrama, stars Edward G. Robinson as a vaudeville "mentalist" who finds, to his embarrassment, that his clairvoyant gift is genuine. He feels so helplessly responsible for the catastrophes he foresees that he cannot bear to cash in on his remarkable powers. He disappears into the depths of Los Angeles, leaving his fiancee (Virginia Bruce) to marry his partner (Jerome Cowan). Just as he could predict, Virginia dies in childbirth and Jerome makes money hand over fist.

All this is told in flashback; now the seer's alarm is focused on Virginia's grown-up daughter (Gail Russell). He becomes entangled in a whole chain of symbolic predictions about her: a crushed flower, shaken windows, violent death in starlight at 11 sharp, at the feet of a lion. Gail's scientific sweetheart (John Lund), Detective Shawn (William Demarest) and various shifty-looking businessmen who might profit by Gail's death, all act as if Robinson were crazy or criminal. Everybody tries to keep him away from the menaced young woman he is trying to save. And sure enough, a flower gets stepped on, wind smacks the windows open, a lion breaks loose from a zoo, the grandfather clock bongs 11--and so forth. These busy goings-on are not really very creepy "unless you bring along an overwhelming will to believe. Stretch by stretch the story seems over-extended and overelaborate. But it is well played--especially by Robinson; and it is as painstakingly and sleekly produced as if it were worth all the trouble. It is as good a way of passing an evening as table-tapping, or, for that matter, going to the run of movies.

Symphonie Pastorale (Jean Delannoy) is a subtle, emotionally complex story about a blind orphan (Michele Morgan) and a married Swiss pastor (Pierre Blanchar) who shelters, schools and raises her from a little wild animal into a lovely young woman. The pastor is the last to realize that his fatherly affection is really only a thin disguise for a lover's jealous passion. His wife (Line Noro) is a bitter, knowing onlooker. Just to complicate things, his son (Jean Desailly) also falls in love, but quite openly, with the girl.

This French-made film version of an Andre Gide story, aimed at grown-up audiences, has so much more integrity and artistry than the run of movies that some of its admirers may be blind to its defects. It is superbly performed; talented and beautiful Mlle. Morgan has a chance to bloom again after an arid period in Hollywood. And the story is drawn slowly out of its characters with a patient indirection that piles up considerable emotional power without ever losing its sensitive touch.

Action-hungry U.S. cinemagoers may get restless waiting for the climax. As a matter of fact, the picture drags on too long after its climax, frittering away the power it has built up. Despite these shortcomings, Director and Co-Adaptor Jean Delannoy has a picture that he can be proud of. Against the crisp beauty of Alpine backgrounds, caught with a sharp pictorial eye, he has also caught the sorrow and frustration of the picture's real setting--the shadowy corners of the human heart.

Sealed Verdict (Paramount) is a sorry-example of Hollywood's new trick of using authentic backgrounds to dress up synthetic stories. The scene is a battle-scarred German city where the U.S. Army is trying war criminals. Through the realistic setting, it is all too easy to spot the old movie corn and the gimmick.

Is the convicted Nazi general really guilty? The question stirs some qualms in his idealistic prosecutor, a U.S. Army major (Ray Milland). Major Milland's search for the facts might have turned up some interesting moral issues--or at least some effective melodrama. Instead, there is only a sort of slow-motion cops & robbers chase in an uncertain direction. By the time Milland's search is patly ended, even the realistic backgrounds have begun to take on a phony look.

*By Gerald Butler, published in 1940 in Eng land, where it sold 232,000 copies. Two U.S. re prints since 1946 have sold some 400,000 copies.

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