The New Pictures

First Love (Universal). Sixteen-year-old Deanna Durbin, Universal's sweetish nightingale, also happens to be its biggest box-office asset. Last week her studio faced a nerve-cracking crisis--Deanna Durbin, having unmistakably outgrown short skirts, must be shown to her public as a young lady receiving her first kiss. Could Songster Durbin hold her fans, who like to think of her as a wide-eyed child with a full-bosomed soprano, after that historic peck? For the thrilling ordeal Universal chose an ingratiating fairy tale about a singing orphan who loses her slipper, wins her prince.

Poor little Orphan Connie (Deanna Durbin) is endowed with nothing in this world but a lyrical larynx and a gruff, rich uncle, who has supported her through the hardships of a swank finishing school. She is disappointed when he does not come to her graduation, but climbs bravely into the limousine he sends in loco parentis. She needs all her courage when it deposits her among his screwy family. Auntie is horoscopic, Cousin Barbara is spoiled, Cousin Walter just asks apprehensively: "Does she still sing?" Bulb-eyed, bulgy Uncle Jim (Eugene Pallette, who has had experience as father of an even screwier family in My Man Godfrey) manages to be out when his family is home, home when they are out. Connie quickly warbles her way into the butler's heart by singing La-calle's Amapola, is soon a popular hit below stairs, where the servants pool their savings to buy her a party dress and silver slippers so that she can go to the great ball. There unknown Connie captures the crowd by caroling a Strauss waltz. Her handsome, horsy young host (Robert Stack) canters over and, while cinemaddicts hold their breath, gives Deanna Durbin her first kiss, which had to be shot twelve times before it was considered impeccable enough to meet the exacting standards of Durbin fans.

Drums Along the Mohawk (20th Century-Fox) continues Producer Darryl Francis Zanuck's probings into the rise of U. S. civilization as exemplified by In Old Chicago, Young Mr. Lincoln. The current example is notable chiefly for its running time (one hour and 43 minutes), a non-stop foot race between Henry Fonda and three pursuing Indians apparently down the entire length of Mohawk Valley, and the dogged persistence with which early American settlers plant wheat every spring for the Indians to burn every autumn. Since one burning wheat field looks much like another burning wheat field, this seasonal firing gets monotonous as the years roll by.

Readers of Walter Dumaux Edmonds' novel about the effects of the American Revolution in the Mohawk Valley, on which this picture is based, may recall the trials of Lana (Claudette Colbert). Softened by the refinements of cosmopolitan Albany, she is suddenly plumped into the cis-Schenectady wilderness by her pioneering husband Gil (worried-looking Henry Fonda). Lana goes into hysterics when the first friendly Mohawk, Blue Back,* pops up in her lonely cabin.

When unfriendly Indians are egged on by British Tories to burn Lana's cabin, her baby dies at birth. Homeless Gil and Lana go to work for plainspoken, horse-faced Widow McKlennar (Edna May Oliver). There is another Indian raid, and, just as the women and children are being put to the tomahawk, Gil, who has gone for help, returns with the Yankee-Doodling Continental Army.

Fans who like their war paint thick, their war whoops bloodcurdling and their arson Technicolored, get their money's worth in this picture. Others may be as thankful as the settlers when the war is ended.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Ninotchka (Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas; TIME, Nov. 6).

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Donald Crisp; TIME, Nov. 13).

Disputed Passage (Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff, John Howard; TIME, Nov. 13).

* Real name: Chief Big Tree. He is one of the two Iroquois Indians found by 20th Century-Fox in Hollywood. The other was considered too fat and short to impersonate an Indian.

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