The New Pictures

The Jazz Singer (Warner), when it first opened at Broadway's Warner Theater on Oct. 6, 1927, set off the fastest revolution in the history of show business.

The picture was all silent except for several musical numbers. At one point, before launching into a song on the screen, Star Al Jolson said: "You ain't heard nothin' yet, folks, listen to this." The historic words gave the screen a voice and sounded the death knell of silent pictures.

The new Technicolored remake of The Jazz Singer is not likely to make history, technological or otherwise. But it is a slick, streamlined version of the original, and still a good show. The sentimental plot tells of the son of an orthodox Jewish cantor who is torn between tradition and Tin Pan Alley. Under Michael (Yankee Doodle Dandy) Curtiz' direction, the film has color and a brisk pace, notably in its musical sequences.

In the title role, owlish Nightclub Comic Danny Thomas is no Al Jolson.* He is no glamour boy either, but he brings a shrewdly homespun touch to the part and has the necessary tear in his voice. Making her movie debut, blonde Jukebox Songstress Peggy Lee sings brightly and plays the jazz singer's girl friend attractively. The picture offers a rich variety of music, from Cole Porter to the Hebrew hymn Kol Nidre. Notably missing: the tear-jerking Mammy, which the late Jolson sang in blackface and on his knees.

The Little World of Don Camillo (Rizzoli-Amato; I.F.E. Releasing Corp.) is a village somewhere in northern Italy in the Po valley, "where the sun beats down on people's heads like a hammer, and where they argue with fists." Here is waged a spirited but friendly rivalry between the militant parish priest, Don Camillo (Fernandel), and his longtime adversary Peppone, the Communist mayor-(Gino Cervi).

The two men fight over the construction of a community center, the milking of cows during a farm strike, a football game between party comrades and parishioners. They even come to blows with each other. But Mayor Peppone also has his son baptized Libero Antonio Camillo Lenin, while Don Camilla officiates at the cornerstone-laying of Peppone's community center. And when the priest is sent away for a vacation by his bishop as a result of his impulsively muscular Christianity, both the Communists and Don Camillo's flock turn out to wish him Godspeed.

As adapted by Director Julien (Garnet de Bal) Duvivier from Giovannino Gua-reschi's 1950 bestseller, The Little World of Don Camilla is a shrewdly contrived series of vignettes that blend charm and humor with acute character observation.

At times the picture verges on the operatic, and the contest between the godless mayor and the ingenuously devout priest becomes almost a Quirt-Flagg routine.

But most of the time the movie makes a lively and disarming human comedy of its theme, generously viewing its characters not as "red or black, but as just plain, ordinary people . . . each one struggling in his own way to build a better world."-- As the battling priest, horse-faced French Actor Fernandel gives a wryly rich performance, while Italy's Gino Cervi, in handlebar mustaches, makes a floridly ferocious Peppone. Good shot: the priest and the mayor slugging it out in the church belfry as the ringing bells punctuate their punches.

The Clown (MGM) is a remake of the 1931 success, The Champ, in which Wallace Beery played a broken-down prizefighter and Jackie Cooper his worshipful young son. In this version, Red Skelton plays a broken-down funnyman with Tim Considine as the youngster.

As in the original, The Clown consists mostly of variations on one situation: a brave little boy keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of his dad's continual boozing and crapshooting. This he accomplishes largely by saying "Aw, gee" and looking forlornly at the camera. As in the original version, the father dies at the fadeout--in this case, after having made good on a television show.

The Clown gives TV Comic Skelton an opportunity to perform one of his specialties: drunk and pratfall routines. But the picture is mostly an unblushing jerker of glycerin tears.

Thunder in the East (Paramount). At one point in this oriental melodrama, one of the characters describes Alan Ladd as "Sir Galahad, Horatio at the bridge and Robin Hood, all wrapped up into one." The description is incomplete. Playing a rough & ready adventurer, Ladd lands in the Indian state of Gundahar with a planeload of guns and ammunition at a time when bandit forces are converging on the Maharajah's palace. The Maharajah's adviser (Charles Boyer), a Gandhi-like character, is an adamant believer in the virtues of nonresistance, an attitude which mystifies Ladd.

In short order, Ladd beards the bandit leader in his camp and has a man-to-man chat with him, helps a good many of the British colony fly out of Gundahar, and, with the help of the suddenly war-minded Boyer, cuts down the enemy with ma chine guns. In the process he also wins the affections of a blind British girl (Deborah Kerr). Thunder in the East is a flabby, farfetched thriller whose melodramatics come across as only a muted rumble on the screen.

* George Jessel originated the part of the jazz singer on the stage in 1925. * Author Guareschi, who uses humor as a political weapon in combating Communism, has expressed dissatisfaction with the movie version of his book because the film Peppone turns out to be too nice a fellow. Guareschi is writing a screen sequel which he promises will embody a stronger anti-Communist message.

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