The New Pictures

Young Scarface (M.K.D. Distributors], imported from England three years after it was filmed, should have stayed discreetly at home. It starts with an impressive list of credits: an adaptation of Novelist Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, scripted by Greene and Terence Rattigan (see below) for the producing-directing team of John and Roy (Seven Days Till Noon) Boulting. But the film reflects little credit on any of them.

The power of Greene's book lay chiefly in his detailed character study of Pinkie, a 17-year-old hoodlum personifying pure evil, and in the religious conflict within the simple waitress who loved him. Except for a single refinement of the book's final irony, the movie treats its characters wholly on the surface. The result looks enough like a second-rate U.S. crime melodrama to make the new title seem an accurate label. Brighton Rock loses its soul when young Scarface becomes just another descendant of Chicago's Scarface Al.

The Browning Version (J. Arthur Rank; Universal-International) is Playwright Terence (The Winslow Boy) Rattigan's own adaptation of his one-acter about a Mr. Chips-in-reverse, an unloved, dried-up academic tyrant on the way out of an English public school after 18 years. Like the play, the film daubs life liberally with greasepaint. But it is still a moving story, and lends British support to the Hollywood slogan that movies are better than ever--especially when adapted with care from successful plays or novels.

Schoolmaster Andrew Crocker-Harris (Michael Redgrave), the most unheroic hero of the year, is a failure to his fingertips, as teacher, husband and colleague. His heart is failing, too, forcing him to leave his job, to no one's regret. Stuffy and coldly embittered, he is derided by his pupils, who call him "The Crock"; patronized by the headmaster (Wilfrid Hyde White), who is ready to withhold his pension; cuckolded by a younger instructor (Nigel Patrick), who vaguely pities him; despised by his wife (Jean Kent), who is not only unfaithful but keeps him fully posted on her infidelities.

Then, in the humiliation of his last days at school, a simple act of kindness changes The Crock's life. A pupil (Brian Smith) astonishes him by presenting a parting gift, a copy of the Agamemnon in the Robert Browning translation. This gesture pierces The Crock's outer crust and strikes an emotional gusher. With the help of Rattigan's facile plotting, it leads to the wife's comeuppance at the hands of her lover and, finally, to a rebellious upsurge of self-respect in The Crock.

The movie improves on the play by widening its view of the school's life and atmosphere and enabling Rattigan to dramatize incidents that the stage cramped him into reporting at secondhand. Such minor characterizations as The Crock's young replacement (Ronald Howard, son of the late Leslie Howard), Actor Smith's sympathetic pupil and Actor Hyde White's hypocritical headmaster seem fuller than before, and are skillfully played. Most to its credit, the film gets up close to a superb piece of acting by Michael Redgrave, who makes the schoolmaster's inner suffering as vivid as his aging stoop, frigid correctness and nasal drone.

The Big Night (Philip A. Waxman; United Artists) spans the painful growth of an insecure 17-year-old boy into manhood. His big night begins with a shocking, puzzling scene: the boy (John Barrymore Jr.) and a group of barflies watch his tough bartender-father (Preston Foster) strip to the waist and kneel docilely to take a brutal caning from a crippled sport reporter (Howard St. John).

Already on the defensive as a timid, motherless misfit and now humiliated and enraged by what he has seen, the youth arms himself with his father's hat, jacket and pistol and sets out for revenge. Before he catches up with the reporter and some harsh facts of life, he drifts through the night in a confused haze of alcohol, hatred and fear. Along the way, he meets a bullying grifter (Emil Meyer), a friendly, well-spoken stranger (Philip Bourneuf) who turns into a heel, and a young girl (Joan Lorring) who tries to keep him from the murder he plans.

Director Joseph (The Prowler) Losey (who also helped to write the script) waits until the last reel before explaining what the barroom beating was all about. In the interval, except for a talky lapse, he keeps The Big Night constantly absorbing. But at the end, explanations come in a spate of dialogue that covers too much ground too fast.

In spite of its faults, The Big Night is an impressive job. Within the framework of a low-budget melodrama, it crams an uncommon amount of character insight, originality and intense feeling, as well as the seedy realism of cheap, big-city backgrounds in the small hours. And young (19) Actor Barrymore, in a turbulent, demanding role, convincingly earns his right to his famous name.

When Worlds Collide (Paramount) is Hollywood's most ambitious foray into the thin air of science-fiction. Producer George (Destination Moon) Pal pictures the end of the world in Technicolor and the escape by rocket of 40-odd humans and an arkload of animals, seeds and gadgets to begin life anew on another one.

Technically, the film offers a sleekly handsome rocket with plenty of dials and levers, a few glimpses into the problem of transplanting life from one planet to another and fair-to-middling trick shots of earthly landmarks in a catastrophe of fire and water. But the human cast is caught in the rut of Hollywood, Calif, and the problems of the characters trying to flee doomsday are not noticeably different from the ones that beset fugitives from floods, wild Indians or police dragnets.

The movie's main line of suspense is an obvious phony: Will the scientist-heroes build and equip their rocket before the star Bellus hits the earth? The script creates little more tension out of whether the adventurer (Richard Derr) who loves the chief scientist's daughter (Barbara Rush) will be too proud to accept a coveted seat in the rocket, or whether the disgruntled technicians who must be left behind will try to commandeer the rocket themselves. On the sidelines, a wicked old capitalist (John Hoyt) who is financing the project tries in vain to control the passenger list, but there is always room for a cute little orphan boy or a stray puppy. The final group of passengers, all hand-picked interplanetary pioneers, look as if Central Casting had sent them to answer a chorus call.

The subject itself exerts enough fascination to make When Worlds Collide fairly easy to look at. The film's greatest disappointment is its failure to overcome or satisfy a moviegoer's legitimate curiosity about what effect the approaching end of the world might have on the people who really live in it.

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