The New Pictures

The Captain from Koepenick (Real-Film; D.C.A.) is a dandy German joke that manages to be only intermittently funny. Now undergoing its third version as a movie, the film is derived from a 1931 play by Carl (The Blue Angel) Zuckmayer, who co-authored the present screenplay. It is the story of a lonely, jobless German shoemaker whose drab world turns into a fairyland of wealth, popularity and authority as soon as he dons the dashing and highly illegal uniform of an army captain.

Zuckmayer's true tale springs from the celebrated saga of Wilhelm Voigt, a turn-of-the-century cobbler who lived near Koepenick, a little town eight miles from

Berlin. As a young man, Voigt forged 300 marks worth of postal money orders to buy trinkets for his girl, and got a 15-year sentence for the crime. Once out of stir, he could not get a job without papers, and could not get papers without a job. Back in the jug he went, this time for breaking into a police station to try to forge a passport for himself.

Slowly Voigt caught on to the fact that in militaristic Prussia the badge of authority was invariably accepted as the real thing. Once free, he bought a captain's uniform and commandeered a squad of soldiers by the simple method of walking up to them and ordering them to follow him. Barking "Los" with all the crisp confidence of a drill instructor, he led his band on a raid of Koepenick's town hall, arrested the bumbling mayor and treasurer, walked off with the contents of the town till. Later, after Voigt gave himself up in return for a promise of getting his passport, the Kaiser was told about the escapade. Chuckling appreciatively, the Kaiser, according to the film, commented: "See, that's discipline. You won't find that anywhere else on earth."

U.S. viewers may chuckle less heartily than the Kaiser. In reworking Voigt's escapade, Scriptwriter Zuckmayer dillydallies interminably in the soupy background of the hoax, gets down to the actual romp only in the last third of the film. And where The Captain calls for gusts of high-velocity satire, Zuckmayer gives it only windy philosophizing ("We're just entries on paper," mourns Voigt. "We're not human beings"). Chief honors for giving The Captain the moderate amount of appeal it has go to Veteran Heinz Ruehmann, whose shuffling, beagle-faced portrayal of Voigt won him last year's best-actor award from the German government.

The Light in the Forest (Buena Vista) is a Walt Disney film about Indians. Delving no deeper than a cat lapping milk from a saucer, Disney has churned out yet another strong-legged, soft-headed pioneer epic, in which each character, action and motive is painted in shrieking monotone. Taken from the 1953 novel by Pulitzer Prizewinning Author Conrad Richter, the story revolves sluggishly around the efforts of a boy (James MacArthur) to resist being taken back to his white parents after having grown up as the adopted son of a Delaware Indian chief. On hand to make sure the boy minds his rail-splitting is a right friendly Army scout (Fess Parker). Actor MacArthur, who is built like a fireplug and is not much more expressive, sets out to make a mess of Fess. He swings at him with a rifle butt, wrestles with him in the muddy Ohio River. But sure 'nuff, he ends up back at the ranch, gloomily sitting in an old metal tub muttering, "Indian no stink, white man stink."

His parents (Frank Ferguson and Jessica Tandy) are upset by the boy's Indian ways ("He even walks like one," exclaims Actress Tandy, as MacArthur rolls across the room with the widespread stride of a U.C.L.A. halfback). But with patience and Parker working hand in glove, the boy is soon dolled up in pale blue breeches, reading from the Beatitudes and gazing blankly at a wide-eyed bit of fluff (Broadway's Carol Lynley) from across the road. Fess himself makes sheep's eyes at the preacher's daughter (Joanne Dru).

Only trouble is that Indian-hating Uncle Wilse (Wendell Corey) will not let the boy be. Snarling like a Ferrari in low gear, Uncle Wilse calls the boy an "Indian savage," uses his bearskin as a rifle target, finally shoots in hot blood an Indian who was on his way to visit the boy. Disgusted with the white man's ways, MacArthur returns to the tepee and joins his mates on the warpath. But at the last minute, will his white corpuscles subdue his red? As sure as arrows whiz and bullets zing.

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