The New Pictures

The Buccaneer (Paramount) introduces to the moviegoing millions the most exciting new film personality since Clark Gable with a mustache: Yul Brynner with hair. Yul did not really grow his own. The studio has provided him with a "transformation"--a curly, reddish-brown confection that suggests a sensitive blend of Bonaparte, Presley and well-kept Irish setter. Unfortunately, the picture will surely prove for many moviegoers, no less than it was for Actor Brynner, a hair-raising experience.

The Buccaneer started out as a Cecil B. DeMille remake of a Cecil B. DeMille version (1938) of the life of Jean Lafitte, the corsair who became the terror of the Western seas in the early years of the 19th century, then turned patriot and won pardon for his men by helping Andy Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans. But somewhere along the production line, C.B., now 77, gave the reins into younger hands. The picture was actually made by Producer Henry Wilcoxon, a onetime star (The Crusades) and longtime assistant of the great man, and by Actor Anthony Quinn, DeMille's son-in-law, who in The Buccaneer has taken on his first assignment as a director.

C.B., according to his lights, left the youngsters plenty to work with. They had a $6,000,000 production nut to crack, along with "a million-two" ($1,200,000) set aside for promotion. They had Vista-Vision, Technicolor, five big stars (Charles Boyer, Charlton Heston, Claire Bloom, Inger Stevens and the berugged Brynner), 55 featured players, 100 bit-players, 12,000 calls for extras, 60,000 props--including 15 authentic pirogues, $100,000 worth of genuine antique furniture and two boxcarloads of Spanish moss and cypress trees. Not to overlook one of the best true-adventure stories in American history.

Somehow, all the blustering statistics do not add up to very much in the way of entertainment. What Wilcoxon and Quinn have produced is just a half-deflated imitation of the old man at his overblown best. The pace is often too vague or too slow, the color suave and unexciting, the costumes tasteful but somehow forgettable.

Actually, the main trouble with the picture is the lack of a controlling sense of style in the acting--a common fault in Hollywood's period pieces. Actor Boyer, for instance, falls somewhere between Paris and Hollywood, but wherever it is, it is not New Orleans. And he seems understandably embarrassed by many of his lines--"Death! Ha! Whan eet come, speet een eets eye." Actress Bloom intrudes a British note, and Actor Heston, as a sweet-talking, milk-sopping Old Hickory with a phony Tennessee accent, makes just about the silliest of the screen's counterfeits of the face on the $20 bill. And Actor Brynner does little more than bound about parapets--probably on the theory that a man who has produced a head of hair should not also be called upon to produce a performance.

The Geisha Boy (Jerry Lewis; Paramount). Jerry Lewis stands glaring across the body of a sleeping blonde at a white rabbit. Jerry is a butterfingered magician who has all he can do to pull the rabbit out of a hat. How can he conceivably pull the thing out of a sleeping compartment without waking the dame (Marie McDonald) and rousing the rest of the passengers on the flight?

Stealthily, Jerry advances to the edge of the berth. Slyly, the rabbit edges away. Now Jerry surveys the intervening terrain--at first with a horrified expression, like an ant confronting the Andes; then with a look of bestial power, like King Kong towering above the prostrate form of Fay Wray; finally with a noble and disinterested determination, like Washington crossing the Delaware. Jerry reaches carefully across the warm pink body. The rabbit is still out of reach. Jerry reaches farther, leans closer to the unconscious cutie. But just as he is about to achieve the rabbit, it ducks under the covers. Whereupon the blonde moans and turns her head. Suddenly she and Jerry are lip to lip. Eyes bugging, Jerry rears back, causing the curtain of the berth to flutter.

The Air Force major (Barton Mac-Lane) who is in charge of the flight notices the movement, hurries to investigate. Jerry sees him coming, ducks out one side of the curtain as the major comes storming in the other side--thereby waking the blonde, who immediately begins screaming and slapping the major's face. The major staggers back, but just at that instant, Jerry accidentally trips the valve of the plane's life raft, which instantly inflates and bounces the major back into the berth, where the lady continues to slap his face. ''Get me out of here!" the major howls. And Jerry, of course, looking like the pure personification of scout's honor, comes to the rescue.

A lot of celluloid has run over the reel since Jerry Lewis was as funny as he is in this scene. But unfortunately, the rest of the picture is a sort of Mack Sennett Sayonara, in whicn Jerry demonstrates at unbearable length (95 minutes) that even without Dean Martin's help he can still be utterly unfunny.

Nine Lives (Nordsjofilm-De Rochemont) is an intense, intelligent Norwegian attempt to describe an almost incredible trial and triumph of the human spirit that created, during World War II, a new Norse epic, the saga of Jan Baalsrud.

Baalsrud, 26, was the only survivor of a sabotage mission against German installations in northern Norway. On the first day of his flight, Baalsrud shot his way through a cordon of German patrols, took a bullet wound in his left big toe, swam an icy fiord, collapsed on the other side.

Next day, his foot already festering with gangrene, he set out for neutral Sweden. Every foot of the road was measured out in inches of agony, eternities of terror. For three days he waited out a savage polar storm in the wind-shadow of a rock. For four days he staggered snowblind through the mountains. One day he stumbled into an avalanche. For over a week he hid in a log cabin, where he cut off most of his gangrenous toes with a hunting knife. For 27 days he lay in frozen and at times delirious solitude in a mountain pass. But at last Jan Baalsrud was brought to safety, more dead than alive, more a symbol than a man--an installment of freedom, a little piece of Norway that the enemy had lost.

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