The New Pictures

The Duchess of Idaho (MGM) is an Esther Williams musical, i.e., a pretty body of water surrounded by cliches. It shows plenty of the human form, mostly Swimmer Williams', against the travel-folder backdrop of Sun Valley in Technicolor. The makeshift plot stops and goes at the convenience of the songs, dances and fancy splashing.

This time Esther flits flirtatiously between a Sun Valley bandleader (Van Johnson), whom she really loves, and a millionaire playboy (John Lund). Johnson is made to work overtime as a singer and dancer, and there are specialty numbers by Lena Horne, Eleanor Powell and Connie Haines, plus an unbilled appearance by Red Skelton. By the time the last monumentally tasteless water pageant has ebbed away, it is hard to tell Sun Valley from the same old rut.

Broken Arrow (20th Century-Fox] makes an effective merger of the old western and the new problem picture. Pleading the cause of the U.S. Indian, whom Hollywood has been kicking around for years, the movie has plenty of gunplay, hoofbeats and crisply Technicolored vistas to keep it from getting preachy.

Based on Elliott Arnold's 1947 novel, Blood Brother, the picture is a fictionalized account of war & peace between the Chiricahua Apaches and Arizona settlers in the 18703. Instead of the blood-lusting savages who whoop endlessly across the U.S. screen, its Indians are proud, dignified warriors with their own cultural tradition, a stern code of honor and a justified hatred of the white invaders. Their tribal chief, Cochise (well played by Jeff Chandler), is an able strategist and a wise statesman. The story works up such sympathy and respect for him and his tribe, and such distrust of their ignorant, arrogant enemies, that most moviegoers will be delighted whenever another paleface bites the dust.

Before working its anthropology lesson into the action, Broken Arrow views the notorious Apaches through the eyes of the white settlers, building a fearsome picture of their terrorism around an Arizona outpost. A frontiersman (James Stewart), tired of the fighting, gets the crazy notion that Cochise may listen to reason. Ignoring the scorn and warnings of the other settlers, he schools himself in the Apache language and lore, sends up introductory smoke signals and rides off alone into the dreaded Indian territory. Director Delmer (Destination Tokyo) Daves puts a fine edge of suspense on Stewart's long ride, his entry into the hostile Apache camp and his exchanges with the chief.

Then, breaking all the cinematic rules of cowboy-Indian warfare, Stewart and Cochise nurse a precarious understanding between the whites and the Apaches. They even fight renegades on both sides to make it bloom into a tribal treaty with the U.S. Government.

The picture's unorthodoxy is less successful when it comes to romance. Stewart woos and wins Sonseeahray (Debra Paget*), a doll-like Indian maiden half his age and size. The love story becomes so precious that it often strains the film's fine sense of realism.

Where the Sidewalk Ends (20th Century-Fox), a melodrama in monotone, reunites the team that made Laura: Producer-Director Otto Preminger, Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. The new picture makes Laura, one of 1944's best films, look better than ever. Andrews plays a tough Manhattan detective with a bad record for manhandling criminals. When he inadvertently kills one, he covers up his trail with false clues, and suspicion points to Gene Tierney's father. It takes no end of foolish talk and action for Andrews to square himself with the law and the girl.

The Flame and the Arrow (Warner) gives ex-Acrobat Burt Lancaster something he really knows how to do. Almost a spoof of the kind of swashbuckling gymnastics that made Douglas Fairbanks famous, the movie is built around a tumbling act. Feebly disguised as a band of gay rogues in 12th Century Lombardy, Lancaster and some old circus associates swing from chandeliers, draperies and trapezes, drop from trees and balconies, climb ropes and poles and all over each other.

The script, huffing & puffing to find excuses for these athletic feats, tells an opera-bouffe story involving Lancaster's "free men of the mountains," a foreign tyrant (Frank Allenby), and a fair lady (Virginia Mayo). Happily, their contrived heroics are spiked with some unconscious comedy.

Lancaster is probably the best acrobat now employed as an actor. After a series of gangster films, he obviously relishes his promotion from a hood to a Robin Hood. But dialogue still throws him, and his modern side-mouthings ("I'll meetcha inna tavern") sound a little disenchanting in Technicolored medieval Lombardy.

*Who wore special contact lenses on her blue eyes so they would photograph as authentic Indian brown.

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