The New Pictures

Twelve O'Clock High (20th Century-Fox) is the freshest and most convincing movie of the current cycle about World War II. It successfully blends an artistry all too seldom shown by Hollywood and the high technical skill that only Hollywood, commands.

Scripted by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay Jr. from their own scenario-like novel about a heavy bomber group in the U.S. Army's Eighth Air Force (in which they both served), Twelve 0'Clock High has the uncommon merit of restraint. It avoids such cinemilitary booby traps as self-conscious heroics, overwrought battle scenes and the women left behind or picked up along the way. (In fact, women appear only in bit parts.) The picture concentrates on an engrossing human crisis posed by the demands of the early air war's "maximum effort."

Twelve O'Clock High is the story of a stubborn flying general's mission: rebuilding a bomber group whose shattered morale under heavy losses threatens to 1) discredit precision daylight bombing, and 2) undermine the whole aerial offensive against German-held Europe. Brigadier General Frank Savage-(Gregory Peck) goes at the job with the cold passion of a martinet and the inner torment of a man of good will. He breaks subordinates, cancels privileges, harangues his crews ("Consider yourselves dead"), disgraces misfits, puts the outfit through elementary training paces and woos such resentment that every pilot accepts his blanket invitation to apply for transfer.

Then the shock treatment begins to pay off, first in bombing results, gradually in grudging admiration for Savage, finally in the esprit de corps that he has been driving for. But as the group's record vindicates the general's inhuman regime, his own humanity betrays him into physical collapse.

The general's fight to mend the morale of the group--which takes almost two-thirds of the film--is a self-contained story so absorbingly pictured that some cinemagoers may feel a letdown when there seems nothing left to fight but the Germans. But Director Henry King makes the most of his only combat sequence: a trim, exciting pattern of re-enacted shots intercut with official U.S. and German wartime film.

Nothing about Producer Darryl F. Zanuck's painstakingly made film is better than its performances. As a paunchy, middle-aged adjutant, Dean Jagger without his toupee seems to have launched an entirely new career. Broadway's Gary Merrill, playing the general's nerve-racked predecessor, adds considerably to the picture's conviction. Hugh Marlowe, Robert Patten, John Kellogg, Millard Mitchell and Paul Stewart are all able actors in top form. If Hollywood had no star system, the difficult central role would call for an actor of more physical maturity than Gregory Peck. Nonetheless, Star Peck rises above the handicap with a strong, beautifully modulated performance that never lets the role down.

East Side, West Side (MGM) is a humorless, slightly awed look at Manhattan's gossip-column set as it might be presented to daytime radio fans. The picture makes a showcase for the specialties of its four glittering stars: Ava Gardner's blissfully pneumatic figure, James Mason's decadent inflections, some high-toned suffering by Barbara Stanwyck and the impulsive histrionics of Van Heflin.

Based on a novel by Marcia Davenport, the story details a romantic free-for-all between six or seven sketchy characters, no two of whom love each other with enough decisiveness to settle down. The chief conflict centers in a mellowing playboy (Mason) who is torn between his

West Side mistress (Gardner) and his perfect wife (Stanwyck), a pillar of the fashionable East Side. Everything is straightened out by a bit-player who appears long enough to strangle Miss Gardner and leave her priceless body snarled in some priceless drapery.

In this lackadaisical tour of the glamour belt, everyone--headwaiters, kept women, slighted wife, fashion model, tortured playboy--is so quiet, orderly and introspective that high life doesn't appear to be much fun. The movie is geared so closely to a novel's pace and development that it often gives the impression of pages turning.

*A character largely inspired by much-decorated Major General Frank A. Armstrong Jr., now chief of the Alaskan Air Command, who led the first Flying Fortress daylight assault against the Continent.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.