The New Pictures

The Berkleys of Broadway (M -G -M) is a light-hearted Technicolored reunion for Hollywood's best-known dance team: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The last time Fred and Ginger whirled across the screen together (The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, 1939), they were impersonating the famed ballroom dance team of the pre-World War I era. In The Bar-kleys, despite a thin veneer of fiction which makes them husband & wife, they are impersonating the world-famous cinema dance team of the '30s: Astaire & Rogers.

For moviegoers who remember them in Flying Down to Rio (1933), the impersonation doesn't quite come off. For one thing, time--even in Hollywood--has not stood still. Ginger and Fred are no longer quite up to the soaring, smoothly paced routines of the '305. Also missing (with one exception: They Can't Take That Away from Me) are the romantic Gershwin tunes which used to lift and carry their pictures along. Nevertheless, what is left makes much better entertainment than most cinemusicals. Except for a few slow spots, e.g., a flat-footed Scottish number in kilts and some noisy, slashing attacks on a concert grand by Pianist Oscar Levant, the show moves along at a lively clip.

The important point is that Astaire & Rogers are seasoned showmen--both as dancers and comedians. Their dance numbers, though more sedate than ever before, are enchanting examples of the breezy, sophisticated style which they themselves brought to perfection. In his best solo routine--a bit of high-powered choreography in a shoe shop--Astaire proves that at 50 he is still the best all-round heel-totoe man in the business. The rest of The Barkleys proves that Ginger (who, like the heroine she plays, has had her fling as a dramatic actress) is still the best movie dancing partner that Astaire has ever had.

A Kiss in the Dark (Warner) is a daffy romantic comedy apparently intended to prove that 1948 Oscar-winning Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda) is not really a deaf-mute. It is the romance of Jane, a photographer's model, and David Niven, a wealthy pianist, who owns the Manhattan apartment house where she lives.

The only real laughs are provided by quaint Victor Moore, who as erstwhile owner of the house clucks about among his tenants like an anxious Leghorn. The artistry of his quavering frustrations and waddling dignity make the rest of the shenanigans look plain silly.

City Across the River (Universal-International), based on Irving Shulman's novel, The Amboy Dukes, and solemnly introduced by Drew Pearson, is another slum drama with a social message. It tells the story of a Brooklyn kid (Peter Fernandez) who joins a tough street gang (the "Dukes") and quickly goes wrong.

City is far more honest and unpretentious than most movie preachments on juvenile delinquency. Most of the backgrounds, shot in Brooklyn's swarming slums, give the doings of the tinhorn hoodlums a convincing look of reality. Best atmospheric touches: Peter's grubby home; the grey, frayed hopelessness of his hard-working parents (admirably played by Thelma Ritter and Luis Van Rooten); the dank, underground goings-on in the Dukes' basement club; the bits & pieces of broken-down humanity that cluster like flies around Selma's sidewalk soda stand. Especially good are the close-up studies of gratuitous violence: in the poolroom the Dukes brutally beat up a couple of outsiders; in the school manual training class the kids (armed with the crude guns they have been secretly making at their work benches) defy, bully and finally terrorize their teacher.

All of the Dukes, and notably Peter Fernandez and Al Ramsen, give excellent performances. They do so well, in fact, that they could get along without any help from Pundit Pearson, who shows up again at the end to preach the moral. In the process, he almost pulls the teeth of a film that has a lot of bite.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Paramount), featuring Bing Crosby, is proof that Mark Twain, who wrote the original story, knew a thing or two that Hollywood has forgotten. Twain figured, correctly, that it would be fun to turn loose in the 6th Century a character with some of the scientific knickknacks and know-how of the igth Century. Twain also knew that to get the fun his audience must be willing to believe in the fantasy--' to accept it as a child accepts a fairy story. Unfortunately, the makers of this movie appear to believe in nothing but Bing Crosby's box-office appeal. As Hank Martin, a young Connecticut blacksmith, Bing gets knocked on the head one stormy night at the turn of the century and wakes up in 528 A.D. at the point of an Arthurian lance. To save himself from the stake, he has only a pocketful of modern matches, a watch crystal, a hefty magnet and an almanac. This, of course, is where the fun should begin. But it doesn't. Bing riffles through his wonder-working stunts, jousts with Sir Launcelot (Henry Wilcox-son) and rescues King Arthur's beautiful niece (Rhonda Fleming) with his tongue conspicuously in his cheek. To underline his bare-faced parody of a second-rate Bing Crosby, he also sings a few typically Crosby tunes.

The only principal who seems to enjoy his role, apparently because he really believes in it, is Sir Cedric Hardwicke, as a sniffly, red-nosed King Arthur. The rest of the clanking, top-heavy production has the hollow, dejected air of a joke with its punch line missing.

. Bride of Vengeance (Paramount) is a murky 15th Century brother& -sister act involving Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia (Macdonald Carey and Paulette Goddard) and Lucrezia's latest husband (John Lund). As history, it is elaborate Hollywood spoofing. As melodrama, it is constantly toppling into broad burlesque.

John Lund pushes the plot along when he gets a yen for Lucrezia. "She's a lily!" he cries, in the same tone he would use to say "She's a lulu." Once married to her, he starts composing verses about roses and nightingales in the garden outside her bedchamber. When the poems fail to impress the pouting bride, Lund turns on the nearest nightingale and roars: "You silly ass!" In reply, the soundtrack lets out a squawk like a barnyard hen.

Just when Lund thinks that his wife has begun to love him, the lily-like Lucrezia tries to do him in with a dollop of poisoned wine. Lund seems to enjoy all this nonsense, but he is the only member of the cast who does. Miss Goddard, trailing around in sumptuous gowns, waits in vain for an opportunity to climb alluringly in & out of a Renaissance tub.

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