The New Pictures

Branded (Paramount) takes place in a Technicolored Old West where men are men and Alan Ladd is Alan Ladd. More intricately and outlandishly plotted than most westerns, it differs from the usual Ladd movie by giving its hero a real reason for displaying his torso.

Ladd plays a tough badman who, when asked if he has any friends, replies through his teeth: "My guns." In a scheme to pose as the long-lost son of a wealthy rancher (Charles Bickford), he takes off his shirt twice: first to let a tattoo artist fake a birthmark on his shoulder, later to dupe Bickford with the false credentials.

Along with his new identity and the promise of riches, he picks up a doting mother (Selena Royle), an affectionate sister (Mona Freeman) and a sudden rash of scruples. When he learns that the rancher's real, kidnaped son has been adopted by a Mexican bandit chief (Joseph Calleia), Ladd stages a one-man invasion of Mexico to bring the missing heir home. He is undeterred by a whole bandit army, the rough terrain and the fact that the long-lost son is perfectly content to stay where he is.

The movie gets the benefit of solid performances by Actors Calleia and Bickford, plus Director Rudolph Mate's efficient handling of a last-reel chase. But, like everything else in this saddle soap opera, the assets are defeated by the unstinted heroics of deadpan Actor Ladd.

Halls of Montezuma (20th Century-Fox), Hollywood's latest tribute to the U.S. Marine Corps, is a good movie gone wrong. Depicting the invasion of an unnamed Japanese-held island in World War II, the film ranges between such extremes of sharp combat reporting and low-grade romanticism that the same moviemakers hardly seem capable of both.

Much of the picture is easily the best job yet done on the infantry fighting of World War II. In Technicolor photography that lent itself to little intercutting of real combat footage, Director Lewis Milestone has staged his battle scenes with jarring realism and vigor. By borrowing the brilliant camera technique of his own 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front, he has filmed them with sweep, surprise and rhythm.

Like other recent war films (Battleground, Sands of Iwo Jima), Halls of Montezuma concentrates on a single platoon, this time headed by an ex-schoolteacher (Richard Widmark) who is harried by battle-induced migraine. Unlike the others, Halls gives its characters some dimension and illusion of freshness. The characterizations of Lieut. Widmark and two insecure enlisted men (Richard Hylton, Skip Homeier), for example, are bolstered by short flashbacks to civilian life. Scripter Michael Blankfort also goes beyond lip service to the standard war-is-hell theme; his marines (including Walter Palance, Karl Maiden, Bert Freed and Richard Boone) grimly prove that Sherman was right.

These qualities might outweigh Halls' pat, nick-of-time ending, some weakness in its basic plot motivation and a tendency to slop over into histrionics. What betrays the picture is a crude compromise with its producers' ideas of topical needs. Thus, the mood of tension and fear that goes before the amphibious attack is suddenly dissipated when the landing itself takes place to the jauntily aggressive tune of the Marine Corps hymn as it might be played by a recruiting band. Even worse is a final battlefield oration by Actor Jack

Webb, informing the marines what they are fighting for and making a spiel for future preparedness. The long speech and its reception are out of character, out of place, out of keeping with almost everything that has gone before.

The Flying Missile (Columbia), Hollywood's first movie about guided projectiles, is a sensational dud. Filmed with U.S. Navy cooperation at San Diego and Point Mugu, Calif., the picture works up some passing interest in the missiles whooshing into space from the decks of aircraft carriers and submarines. These scenes are ruined by a broadside of plot cliches: Sub Commander Glenn Ford's valiant struggle against red tape to get his craft equipped with the new weapons; his romance with the admiral's secretary (Viveca Lindfors); his recovery, through sheer grit and amateur psychiatry, from an emotional trauma that paralyzes his legs.

Pagan Love Song (MGM) casts Esther Williams adrift in the shallows of a musicomedy set in Tahiti (and filmed on Hawaiian locations). Esther plays a well-to-do Tahitian half-caste who meets, loses and finally gets a plantation heir (Howard Keel) newly arrived from Ohio. In the full flush of health, she glows in almost every tint of the Technicolor spectrum, swims not only on the water and under it but also (in a dream sequence) in the sky. In lieu of comedy, Actress Williams and Singer Keel laugh with unconvincing gaiety on the flimsiest excuse. The score consists of the kind of music that audiences whistle on their way into the theater. In its own unintentional way, Pagan Love Song is mildly amusing; if it were just a little better, it would be intolerably dull.

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