The New Pictures

Mam'zelle Pigalle (Films-Around-the-World), Brigitte Bardot's sixth major U.S. release, contains enough provocative photography to give a teen-ager the Brigitters and to accelerate his grandfather's Bardotage. Though Brigitte wears more than 15 costumes, one suitcase could easily carry the lot. When not wearing a bikini, she wriggles about in tutus, tights and gossamer nighties. Once she wears a pirate suit that is slashed at the most astonishing points.

But as usual, her favorite costume is the wrap-around towel that does not quite wrap around. Unhappily, the makers of this movie spend so much time exposing Brigitte that they seem to overlook the exposition of the story--which becomes especially unclear whenever Actress Bardot is on the screen. Still and all, the plot makes more sense than some of the subtitles. "Merde!" cries Brigitte, and the English translation helpfully explains: "Ouch!"

Another Time, Another Place (Lanturn Productions; Paramount) should provide an answer to one of Hollywood's most pressing questions: How will the recent scandal about Lana Turner's private life affect her public appeal? At a preview of this picture, when Actress Turner's name flashed on the screen, cheers rocked the galleries. The picture itself might more suitably be greeted with groans, but it is just the sort of soap opera that can be useful in laundering a reputation.

On the screen, as she was in person, Lana is romantically involved without benefit of clergy, but on the screen, or so the dialogue would seem to suggest, her only guilt is her innocence--the cad (Sean Connery) never told her he was married. He is a great big sophisticated British newscaster, she is a poor little wide-eyed American newspaper correspondent. They meet in London during World War II, and she never doubts that bedding will lead to wedding until he tells her the awful truth. "I don't want to hurt you," he explains, "but I don't want to hurt my wife and child either." To make matters worse, Lana has already ditched her steady beau (Barry Sullivan). "I'll have to look through your letters." Sullivan snarls. "Maybe I've missed something." In view of the headlines, audiences are inclined to snicker at this point. Anyway, that rat of an Englishman is soon exterminated in a plane crash, and the picture dies with him. For the next hour Actress Turner conducts a peculiarly, sniffly and tedious wake.

Unfortunately, Actress Turner is responsible for more than her own acting. As proprietor of the company that co-produced this picture, Cinemagnate Turner must also take some of the credit for the picture's treacly taste, clumsy structure and prevailing mood of moral Lanarchy.

Uncle Vanya (Uncle Vanya Co.), the first U.S. attempt to film a play by Anton Chekhov, is hardly what that precise Russian doctor would have ordered. For one thing, the picture was made on a shoestring ($250,000)--and was strangled by it. The sets look like cardboard; the sound track is frequently almost inaudible; the lighting seems to have been done by a compulsive bulb snatcher. Worse yet, Directors John Goetz and Franchot Tone have tried to make a motion picture without motion; for the most part, they simply set up their camera in front of an off-Broadway production of the play (TIME, Feb. 13, 1956) and let it roll. Unfortunately, what looked good to sixth-row center often seems suspiciously theatrical to the camera's critical eye. All the main performances--Franchot Tone as the doctor, George Voskovec as Vanya, Dolores Dorn-Heft as the young wife--are curiously out of emotional focus, and some clumsy cutting in the early scenes confuses the impression still further. As for the Russian atmosphere, the company achieves little more than a general impression of cold tea.

For all that. Chekhov's drama from the first scene drags the moviegoer's feelings into its sluggish circles of despair as a whirlpool drags at a chip. Seldom since Oedipus Rex has a dramatist so largely glimpsed the passion of inertia. Nothing happens; everything happens. And always over the evening stupor of his lives the writer's ironies play like summer lightnings--barely perceptible, remotely ominous, subtly illuminating. Even when he is badly done, Chekhov makes a remarkably good show.

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