The New Pictures

Marjorie Morningstar (Warner) speeds up the plot of Herman Wouk's bestseller, but the telling still takes a long 123 minutes. Though Marjorie (Natalie Wood) is deprived of that mad moment of youthful abandon with her lover (Gene Kelly), she at least avoids ending up with grey hair, suburbia and a stuffy lawyer. Instead she goes up to re-examine the summer resort South Wind, spends a few minutes staring at the still irresponsible Kelly, and decides to leave him and his world forever. "Say, you've really grown up, haven't you," says the resort manager (George Tobias). Retorts Marjorie, with an ever-so-meaningful glance: "Yes, I think I have."

It seems probable that she will make suburbia after all, for on the bus, in the final, movie-ending ride away from carefree childhood, sits the man who has waited for her to grow up--Playwright Wally (Marty Milner). Except for his freckles and the wide-rimmed spectacles he uses to help hide them, Wally looks, talks, thinks and acts just like the lawyer or the doctor: conventional, respectable and successful. Thus, Marjorie's parents (Claire Trevor, Everett Sloane) can rest assured that middle-class morality has triumphed.

Even with its too-glib identification of mental maturity with success and conformity, the movie is as good as the novel. Gene Kelly sings and dances too well to be a convincing second-rater, but he gives an agile performance as the camp entertainment director. As schmalzy Uncle Samson, Ed Wynn gets a few laughs, and Claire Trevor is sharp and clear as the irritating but well-meaning mother. Natalie Wood, a great beauty, is something less than a great actress. Her most believable moment comes when Marjorie, despairing of Broadway acting fame, says mechanically: "Sometimes I think I don't have any talent at all."

Chase a Crooked Shadow (Warner), a shadowy whodunit with a crooked who-is-it finish, does its chasing along the austere magnificence of Spain's Mediterranean, rock-tempered coastline. Overlooking the soft seas, in a typical Spanish villa complete with a Beverly Hills bar inside an East Hampton beach house, a powder-pale beauty (Anne Baxter) writhes in poor-little-rich-girl loneliness. Her father committed suicide, his mining trust fell to dust, and her speed-happy brother apparently died in a car crash. But her real worries are all boxed up and neatly hidden away in the beach-house chimney--oodles of stolen jewels. So long as they do not go up in smoke, the lady seems secure.

But a princely rogue (Richard Todd), his manner as cool as the Lagonda he drives, enters the villa and announces that he is her brother. He sports the right tattoo, recites her favorite rhyme, even knows how to mix the aperitif she guzzles before a swim. When she calls a friendly, reliable old uncle (Alexander Knox) to denounce the rascal, uncle celebrates his nephew's reincarnation. Then a couple of creepy, creeping servants jangle her nerves even more. Who is the hero? Is it the sad-mouthed police comisario (Herbert Lorn) who lurks in the shadows? Is there a hero at all?

After the plot is finally straightened out, Producer Douglas Fairbanks Jr., unable to resist hamming up his own road show, dashes onto the screen and swears the audience to secrecy. But by that time, even Director Michael (Around the World in 80 Days) Anderson does not seem to care one peseta's worth.

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