Toscanini: Hymn of the Nations

(Mayer-Burstyn), made by OWI Overseas in 1943 for European distribution, is now for the first time released in the U.S. Its star: Arturo Toscanini, who (with Tenor Jan Peerce, the Westminster Choir and the NBC Symphony Orchestra) made this movie debut, for patriotic motives, free of charge. Content: Verdi's Overture to La Forza del Destino and Hymn of the Nations, the latter with revisions and interpolations by Toscanini. (He changed Italia, patria mia--Italy, my fatherland--to Italia tradita--Italy, betrayed, and climaxed the piece with the Internationale and The Star-Spangled Banner.)

The film is made with unshowy, clear intelligence. The playing of Verdi has a vigor, sensitiveness and brilliance which only Toscanini himself, in performances untroubled by the interruptions necessary to his new medium, could excel. And the faces of singers and musicians at work are now amusing, again very moving.

But what gives the film its modest greatness and its permanent value is its record of one of the few beneficent giants of this century: Toscanini. Often the camera shows that he is singing, shouting, speaking through the music, and for the sake of history it is too bad that his voice is lost in the sound-track din. But the face itself shows God's plenty. Incredibly concentrated, vigilant and severe, it has the intensity of a crucible, the ultimate, almost masklike human magnificence which may be seen in the sculpture of Michelangelo. This face is all the more impressive, when compared with leisured, restive, shy shots made in Toscanini's home, in which he is obviously as human as he is superhuman, and about as comfortably adjusted, away from his job, as a tiger in a cage.

Joe Palooka, Champ (Monogram). This lowly "B" production is a highly intelligent animation of Ham Fisher's comic strip--or of what the strip was before it got "significance." In really brilliant style it strikes precisely the comic-strip attitude--the understatement of motion, the two-dimensional, parodic life. The villain of the piece (Eduardo Ciannelli) never peeks out from behind his leer; the heroine (Elyse Knox) is rich but unspoiled; the hero (Joe Kirkwood Jr.) is profoundly respectful of his mother, and as innocent as if he had never had a man-to-man talk with his father.

Palooka is discovered in "the biggest little town in Pennsylvania" by Manager Knobby Walsh (Leon Errol), who eases him over such bumps in the K.O. road as love and gangsters, and into the championship. This groggy plot even includes the scene where the hero turns to wave at his girl in the crowd and is promptly flattened by his opponent. What saves the film is its hilarious ribbing of the fight game and fight pictures.

A sample: in Joe's first fight, the referee, a ghastly old bruiser, turns out to be the brother of Joe's opponent. "When ya knock 'm out," he tells his brother, "go ta dat cawnah, Frankie, and I'll count." Then comes a belt-bursting belly laugh: to the pictorial amazement of the referee, Joe not only knocks Frankie out with one punch, but knocks him clean through the floor boards of the ring. But the canvas is unbroken and cradles him as he sags slowly, dreamily out of sight.

Palooka is as guileless and nourishing as a big glass of milk -- a must for kids, and good for grownups, too.

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