The New Pictures

Search for Paradise (Stanley Warner Cinerama Corp.), the fourth Cinerama production, pursues the formula to its travelogical absurdity. As far as the scenery goes, Search is able to find plenty of it in the Himalayas. Airborne, the camera looks down like Shiva on the glittering tremendum of eternal snows; waterborne, it hurls the watcher through a thrilling passage of some rapids on the Indus River. But when the travel stops and the story begins, the show turns out to be a quasi-Oriental epic with a superman for a hero. The superman: radio's Lowell Thomas, who just happens to be one of the founders of Cinerama Productions Corp.

In the spring of 1956, Producer-Scriptwriter-Lyricist-Narrator-Hero Thomas hastens to inform the audience, he was appointed a special U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, for the coronation of the King of Nepal, by the President of the U.S. And in the interest of art--not to mention the financial interests of the Cinerama people, whose first three productions have already grossed $60 million--he decided to take the Cinerama audience along to see "the glowing fantasy of Asia." Those who accept his invitation will not actually see "the mythical Shangri-La" that Commentator Thomas leads them to expect, but they will certainly have plenty of opportunity to see Lowell Thomas.

They will see Thomas getting into a plane, Thomas riding in a plane, Thomas getting out of a plane. They will see Ambassador Thomas, all done up in high hat and frock coat, presenting his credentials to the King and making a little speech. And during a visit to Kashmir they will hear--if by that time they have not been deafened by the music of Dimitri Tiomkin--a singing commercial for Lowell Thomas' daily newscast.

The Three Faces of Eve (20th Century-Fox) is based on the study, made by two University of Georgia psychiatrists, of a three-way split personality (TIME, Feb. 18). Unfortunately, the performers of such parts have about as much chance of making a score as a three-horse parlay. And the moviegoer is apt to find himself, long before the picture is over, feeling like an inmate, and watching narrowly for a chance to escape.

Such was the case with low-budget Lizzie (TIME, March 25), the first of the three-ring personality circuses. And such--despite careful writing and direction by Nunnally Johnson and some fancy acting in the title roles--proves to be the case with big-budget ($1,750,000) Eve. What went wrong? The plot, which attempts to dramatize all the important episodes of the published case history, is explanation enough.

Into the office of a psychiatrist (Lee J. Cobb) walks a plain and rather prim young housewife (Joanne Woodward) who complains of blinding headaches and "spells." After a few talks with the doctor, she feels some relief. Then one day, months later, her husband (David Wayne) finds the bedroom strewn with flashy clothes which she insists she did not buy; but the people at the store, who know her well, insist she did. Back to the doctor, who begins to suspect that there is more to Eve White than meets the I.

Pretty soon he encounters the second person of the problem, a hip-flicking little hoyden who calls herself Eve Black, and who likes nothing better than to get thoroughly gassed--and leave the other Eve, who still has no suspicion of her dark sister's existence, with the hangover. So it goes, until one day Eve Black reports that she is having spells, too, and shortly thereafter--look out, here comes another psychic sidekick. This one calls herself Jane, and seems to be a normal, healthy girl--a sort of emotional median between the other two--but as far as the moviegoer is concerned, the picture has become a drearily confusing game of button, button, who's got her buttons.

What's worse, the difficulties of Eves-dropping are complicated by the inevitable fact that movies are made to be seen, and the camera has not been invented that can dolly around the landscape of the soul. Actress Joanne Woodward, a television player who is easily the twinklingest star that Hollywood has constellated this year, modulates face and figure with the eerie plasticity of an India-rubber woman, in a spectacular effort to reveal and distinguish the three people she is supposed to be. As Eve White, she looks something like a rose that has been pressed too long in the family Bible. As Eve Black, she shakes it around with considerable virtuosity. And as Jane, she breathes a calm, midsummer warmth of maturity. But time and again, the script forces her to change character so often and so quickly that her meatiest moments sometimes look like rather thinly sliced ham.

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