The New Pictures

Lost Boundaries (Film Classics), first published as a real-life drama in Reader's Digest, described the tragic dilemma of a fair-skinned Negro family in a small New England town who for years had "passed" as whites. The father was a prosperous doctor and a pillar of the community, the mother an active worker in civic affairs. The children, unaware of their antecedents, were normal, happy-go-lucky American school kids--until the day their father, whose secret had been exposed by U.S. naval intelligence, told them the truth. From there on, they became in their own minds pariahs in a nightmare world of shrieking suspicions and shrinking fears.

For Producer Louis de Rochemont, who unearthed this somber bit of Americana in the neighborhood of his New England home and passed it on to Reader's Digest, the story was a natural. Past master of the documentary film (MARCH OF TIME, Fighting Lady, etc.) and a vocal opponent of Hollywood's sound stage techniques, De Rochemont set to work on location in Portsmouth, N.H. For his cast he recruited a handful of relatively unknown actors and a group of Portsmouth citizens. For sets he used what "was ready to hand: the chaste interiors of Portsmouth homes and the town's shaded streets, simple hospital rooms, and the squalid streets of Harlem.

The result (at a cost of under $500,000) is not only a first-class social document, but also a profoundly moving film. Dr. Carter (Mel Ferrer) and his wife (Beatrice Pearson) are forced into passing as whites so that he can practice his profession. But he keeps clandestine contact with his Negro colleagues, names his son (Richard Hylton) after a famous Negro doctor. Out of these contacts emerge some fresh insight into Negro viewpoints, and into the intricate network of etiquette and anguish separating those who can "pass" from those who cannot.

Dramatically, the film loses ground by its episodic, rigidly chronological story treatment, but the loss is more than regained in a powerful climax and several excellent performances. As Dr. Carter, Mel Ferrer gives a sensitive interpretation of a decent man caught in an indecent dilemma. Richard Hylton, in his first screen appearance, plays the difficult role of Carter's son with ease and assurance. Outstanding bit-player is the Rev. Robert Dunn, real-life rector of Portsmouth's St. John's Episcopal Church. His screenplay sermon on tolerance is a little masterpiece of low-keyed natural eloquence.

Look for the Silver Lining (Warner), Hollywood's newest tender recollection of Broadway's glamourous past, tells the life story of the late Marilyn Miller. Fondly and sometimes foolishly, the script follows Marilyn (June Haver) from the day she joins up, in pigtails and high-button shoes, with her family's vaudeville act, to a fictitious revival of Sally in the 1930s. In between it sandwiches colorful chunks of a half dozen of Broadway's best-remembered shows, samplings of their biggest tune hits, reel after reel of dance routines by June Haver and Ray Bolger (as Jack Donahue), and assorted slapstick sequences by Charles Ruggles as Marilyn's father.

The makers of Silver Lining tried hard to include everything. There are ornate period sets of hotels and music halls, a touch of Uncle Tom's Cabin played in blackface by Marilyn's family, and the 1918 Armistice exploding in headlines and parades. Everything, in fact, is so crowded and cluttered (including the sound track which now & then goes slightly hoarse) that little room is left for nostalgia. In the midst of the uproar Miss Haver sweats out two whole decades and a dozen styles of dance routines. Though fresh and appealing in her pigtail period, she is never quite convincing as Broadway's toast of the '20s.

By far the best thing in the show is Ray Bolger, who dances in his own long-legged, rag-doll fashion--without even trying to imitate the crisper style of Jack Donahue. In one scene, as elegantly leggy as a giraffe, he ambles and ogles his way through a wonderful soft-shoe shuffle. Whenever Bolger is on hand, Silver Lining turns to pure gold. Otherwise, it is richly colored, but only medium-grade ore.

Roughshod (RKO Radio) is a modest little film which offers several minor but pleasant surprises. It is a western, but it is hardly recognizable as such, since it was filmed in black & white against a landscape not even remotely resembling a Grand National Park. Its story is peopled mostly by quiet, plausible characters who engage in no horsy heroics and in only one shooting fracas. In fact, its hero (Robert Sterling) openly confesses to a distaste for manslaughter.

Director Mark Robson, who made the picture for RKO shortly before rocketing into the limelight with Champion (TIME, April 11), imprinted it with several signs of his fresh style. For one thing, there is an intelligent use of sound. Small, natural noises--the clop of hooves and the rattle of stones under the wagon wheels--take on weight and value. Spots of unbroken silence have the quality of noonday sunlight on an empty plain. Other refreshing and honest touches: the homely treatment of four frontier chippies (including Gloria Grahame); the persuasively intimate feel of the western countryside; the sensitive cinematic handling of sound and movement in a slow, hide-and-seek gunfight on a mountain slope.

No great shakes as either drama or suspense, Roughshod nevertheless exhibits several very good reasons why Director Robson, now making movies for Samuel Goldwyn, is one of the most sought after young directors in the business.

Night Unto Night (Warner), according to Psalms 19,* sheweth knowledge of the Lord. In Hollywood hands, the biblical text becomes a pretext for showing off an extraordinary amount of morbid, flowery talk about the nature of life, death and love.

Most of the talk is handled by a young scientist (Ronald Reagan) who is suffering from epilepsy, and a handsome widow (Viveca Lindfors) who is addicted to depressing chats with the spirit of her dead husband. Also involved in the impromptu panel discussions are a garrulous painter (Broderick Crawford) and the widow's younger sister (Osa Massen), who is a heavy tippler with leanings toward nymphomania.

Despite the low-keyed lighting and some ominous shots of stormy Florida coast, nothing much happens. In the course of the love story, Sweden's Viveca Lindfors is not only pleasant to look at, but appears to be an actress. Reagan plays the role of the epileptic with the abstracted air of a man who has just forgotten an important phone number.

*"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge."

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