The New Pictures

Confidential Agent (Warner) is in the best tradition of Warner Brothers' socially significant melodramas. Inspired by Graham Greene's excellent anti-fascist thriller, the film has all the thrills and some of the political indignation of the book.

Incorrigible cinemaddicts may insist on regarding Charles Boyer as a romantic figure--even in his shabby overcoat and battered hat. But the hero of Confidential Agent is far from a stock heroic figure. He is middleaged, greying, easily winded and persistent rather than brave. A Spanish Loyalist soldier whose wife and child have been killed, he is sent on a confidential mission to England in 1937 to keep a shipment of coal out of the Nationalists' hands. He is beaten up, shot at and framed for murder. He is chased up dusty stairways and down drab, foggy alleys. He wins out mostly-through stubbornness and luck.

His luck takes the angular form of Lauren Bacall, who is cast as a British coal tycoon's bored daughter. It is unhappy casting. The Bacall publicity has plainly pushed the young woman too far too fast. Neither a great beauty nor a great actress, her voice and facial expressions, both limited, soon grow monotonous. She is not even the interesting personality which careful direction made of her in To Have and Have Not.

Miss Bacall occasionally remarks in a loud monotone: "I hate melodrama." Her protest does not, in any sense, stop the show. All the supporting players do their jobs efficiently. Wanda Hendrix stands out sharply as a downtrodden little

London slavey. Peter Lorre, Katina Paxi-nou and Victor Francen are a very nasty gang of despicable villains. And Director Herman Shumlin has polished up a gallery of minor characters that are as balmy and memorable as any Hitchcock ever thought of. Notable examples: an intense old professor who has invented a new language as a means toward international peace, and a Hindu "mass observer" whose love of irrelevant facts helps solve a crime.

This Love of Ours (Universal) is a

tearful series of emotional stresses & strains between a love-starved child, a long-suffering father and a beautiful, misunderstood mother. At almost any point in the plot, most of the complications could have been ironed out easily. But none of the characters will stop looking noble long enough to make a few simple explanations. It's as if everyone were afraid of letting the story down.

And a reminiscent old story it is. A musical comedy star (Merle Oberon) sprains her ankle and is treated in her dressing room by a handsome French interne (Charles Korvin). Ah, Paris--with the horse chestnuts in bloom! Miss Oberon's touring troupe moves on, but she has decided to be a poor Parisian housewife. The years slip by and Dr. Korvin obviously isn't getting rich at his research; but Merle seems happy with her wifely chores and her roly-poly daughter. Very suddenly, one day, Dr. Korvin suspects his wife of infidelity, and without asking for explanations, he runs off with the baby.

Ten years go by and Dr. Korvin has become stylishly grey at the temples. Judging by his plushy country estate, he must by now be the most famous, and certainly the richest, research scientist in all the world. At a convention in Chicago, he goes slumming with some doctor friends--and who does he find playing the piano in a fairly seedy-looking nightclub but Merle. She is much more cynical but just as beautiful as ever.

Director William Dieterle has frankly set out to pull the customers' heart strings like so much taffy. This time his expert hand has slipped. His craftsmanship is submerged in an inept script. Even Claude Rains, generally a likable and competent actor, has script trouble. Referred to throughout the film as a wise and witty caricaturist, Mr. Rains's caricatures look worse than mediocre, and he has been given nothing either wise or witty to say.

CURRENT & CHOICE

The House I Live In (Frank Sinatra on tolerance; TIME, Nov. 12).

Spellbound (Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov; TIME, Nov. 5).

The Spanish Main (Paul Henreid, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak; TIME, Oct. 29).

American Beauty (MARCH or TIME on the beauty business; TIME, Oct. 29).

Kiss and Tell (Shirley Temple, Jerome Courtland, Walter Abel; TIME, Oct. 22).

Blithe Spirit (Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond; TIME, Oct.

IS).

The House on 92nd Street (Lloyd Nolan, Signe Hasso, William Eythe; TIME, Oct. 8).

The True Glory (Dday to V-E day documentary; TIME, Sept. 17).

Isle of the Dead (Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer; TIME, Sept. 17).

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