The New Pictures

Smash-Up (Walter Wanger; Universal-International) could be mistaken, on its surface, for just another of those wife-v.-secretary "problem" movies which are called, with unconscious contempt, "woman's pictures." But beneath its soap-opera surface, it takes some perceptive looks at a marriage going to pieces.

It is the story of a crooner (Lee Bowman) who rises too fast in the world, and of what the rise does to his wife (Susan Hay ward). The wife serves him well and happily, so long as he is handling cowboy ballads on 6 a.m. radio dates. But once he comes into that lustrous realm in which appearances and contacts and discreet intrigue count for so much, a Perfect Secretary (Marsha Hunt) takes over more & more of the spadework. She even decorates the crooner's new apartment, and selects gifts for his wife. The wife, robbed of every reason to believe that she is useful, needed or loved, and trying always to brace herself among people who politely regret her, takes to heavier & heavier drinking.

The husband, by neatly spaced degrees, becomes surprised, bewildered, alarmed, angry, ashamed, disgusted, vindictive--but never by any chance willing to recognize his own part in the disaster. Short of spiraling depravity or suicide--and short of the debatable happy ending--their smash-up is notably thorough and well-documented.

Even some of the tiresomely conventional things about this picture are unconventionally done. Most of the cast, for example, are rich, well-dressed and nice to look at, but the observation of this glamor world is sharp and disenchanted.

Alcoholism and other forms of neurosis, currently so fashionable on the screen, are here presented without the usual hocus-pocus and yeast-endorser's jargon.

Boomerang! (20th Century-Fox) is an excellent movie of its kind--and its kind is very good and rare indeed. The idea: to film a story based on, and essentially faithful to, fact; to film it in an actual town, using actual buildings as sets and actual townspeople as players.

Boomerang! is based on a case in the early career of the former U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings. It was photographed, completely outside the studio, in the streets, houses, churches and civic buildings of Stamford, Conn. A number of ordinary citizens get effectively into the act, though most of the speaking roles are handled by skilled professionals.

The story: a well-loved clergyman (Wyrley Birch) is shot through the head on a village street. There are no known motives, no clues, and it looks like an impossible case to crack. But someone must be tried and convicted, quick. Elections are near, and through their newspapers the political outs belabor the reform administration. Among innumerable stumblebums, the police dragnet at length yields a young veteran (Arthur Kennedy). There is a horrifying amount of evidence against him; worn down by third-degree treatment, he signs a confession. It is a perfect case, and State's Attorney Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) is being talked up for the governorship. But Harvey has been doing some investigating on his own, and he has become convinced of the young man's innocence. In two sensational court scenes, he proves enough to ensure the prisoner's release.

The most obvious fact about this movie is that it could hardly be improved on. Richard Murphy's script clarifies the community's characters, conflicts and issues in crisp, journalistic fashion; Norbert Brodine's camera work is as clean and precise as the script; the whole show ticks like an expensive watch. It is the best film to date by Producer Louis de Rochemont, who has already dedicated a couple of good ones (The House on 92nd Street, 13 Rue Madeleine) to the proposition that nothing is quite as real as the real thing, artfully used. This time, the proposition, is brilliantly demonstrated by Director Elia Kazan and by the nonprofessional actors as he handles them. There are some highly professional performances by Dana Andrews, Arthur Kennedy, Ed Begley and Lee J. Cobb.

The-picture's naturalism is stylized, of course, and is by no means the first of its kind in films. But in Boomerang! the trick is fully and perfectly turned. Also, an important corner is turned, away from Hollywood's rather monotonous dreamland, into the illimitable possibilities of the world the eye actually sees. Around that corner, many other films may follow, to everybody's profit.

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