The New Pictures

The Hour of 13 (MGM) casts Peter Lawford as a Raffle-ish amateur cracksman who steals both outsize emeralds and ladies' hearts. Lawford has to interrupt these interesting pursuits temporarily when the police suspect him of being the Terror, a nasty fellow who slinks about skewering London bobbies on a three-foot sword. Disguising himself as a bobby, Lawford gives Scotland Yard an invaluable assist in tracking down the Terror, thereby further endearing himself to the police commissioner's beautiful daughter (Dawn Addams), whom he has already captivated with such gems of repartee as: "I think if a jewel thief looked at you, he'd never know what jewelry you were wearing."

Lawford has the proper light touch as the light-fingered leading man, and there is some spooky London fog to go with the murky dramatic doings. In spite of a moralistic ending that seems to have been tacked on, this made-in-Britain movie is a modestly diverting thriller that is as pleasantly well-mannered as its hero.

Kansas City Confidential (Edward Small; United Artists) combines a "perfect crime" plot with some fair-to-middling moviemaking. An ex-cop (Preston Foster), having engineered what appears to be a foolproof million-dollar bank robbery in Kansas City, takes off for Guatemala with the loot. In the sleepy Central American town, things seem to be even busier than in Kansas City. Foster must cope not only with his accomplices, but also with an ex-con (John Payne) who has been roughed up by the police as a suspect, and who has taken it upon himself to run down the real robbers. Foster's pretty daughter (Coleen Gray) also shows up, and promptly falls in love with Payne.

After a few brawls and beatings, both justice and love emerge triumphant. Obviously, the "confidential" of the title does not refer to the picture's plot, which is a very model of transparency.

Breaking Through The Sound Barrier (London Films; United Artists), a soaring, British-made movie about supersonic aviation, gets off to a flying start. In a prologue before the credit titles come on the screen, a World War II Spitfire, cavorting above the English Channel, is almost torn to bits as it plunges into a wracking flat-out power dive and hits the turbulent shock waves of the sound barrier. The picture then goes on to the main body of its subject: the postwar conquest of faster-than-sound flight, which turned out to be the most significant event in the history of aviation since the Wright brothers took to the air in 1903.

Originally called The Sound Barrier in England,. Breaking Through is described by Director David (Brief Encounter, Great Expectations) Lean as "a modern adventure story." It is also a stunning film flight into the unknown, an imaginatively told movie about the human imagination exploring the whole new realm of the air. Terence (The Winslow Boy) Rattigan's screenplay examines both flight and flyers: the stresses & strains, mechanical as well as human, of its theme. A pioneer aviation magnate (played with consummate craft by Ralph Richardson) is dedicated to penetrating the sound barrier. Before his "evil vision" is vindicated, his son (Denholm Elliott) and his son-in-law (Nigel Patrick) die at the controls of their planes, and the ruthless magnate himself is revealed to be a very lonely and human individual.

Some of the earthbound scenes of Breaking Through seem to be slick, low-altitude drama. But the picture's breathtaking aerial shots capture much of the excitement and exaltation of flight in dazzling imagery: long shots of sleek, gleaming jets climbing and diving in magnificent, vapor-trailed trajectory or hanging suspended in space among the high, pale palaces of slow cloud; head-on close-ups of test pilots in G-suits and goggles, framed in a halo of Plexiglas and sky.

There are many unusual sequences: a love scene between Test Pilot Patrick and his wife (Ann Todd), wearing oxygen masks, played eight miles up in the air as they jet-hop from London to Cairo for a leisurely lunch; Test Pilot John Justin laughing with joy as he crashes the sound barrier in a shattering, exquisite moment, and then suddenly breaking into tears from the ordeal of the flight when he lands on the ground; the camera tilting crazily, as if it were careering through the sky, while focused on Tycoon Richardson shakily listening in his office to a radio report of a crucial test. Through the picture, like a macabre musical motif, runs a sonic soundtrack: great swooping wooshes, the piercing wail of the Vickers Supermarine 535 Swift as it dives from 40,000-ft. heights toward the buffeting, invisible barrier of sound.

Assignment--Paris (Columbia) is set in that never-never newspaper office usually imagined by the movies. The highly colorful personalities include a suave editor (George Sanders) who is infatuated with demon Girl Reporter Marta Toren. She, in turn, is in love with intrepid Newsman Dana Andrews, who is described as "a one-man newspaper." For good measure, there is also a stylish fashion editor (Audrey Totter) who is an old flame of Sanders', now making eyes at Andrews.

These staffers (assigned to what purports to be the Paris office of the New York Herald Tribune's European edition) alternate between playing footie with one another and playing hide & seek with a scurvy group of Iron Curtain spies. Reporter Andrews, assigned to the Budapest beat, is jailed, drugged and tortured by Hungarian heavies. An elusive bit of microfilm evidence turns up just in time for a happy ending.

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