The New Pictures

Man on Fire (MGM) smolders intermittently, which is in itself surprising because the plot could set soap opera back at least ten years. Bing Crosby might have cheered everybody by husking a tune or two, but instead he is up to his tonsils in a sticky broken-home situation that would challenge the sweet wisdom of Dorothy Dix. He just cannot forgive his ex-wife (Mary Fickett) for letting herself be seduced, then married by that smooth talker from the State Department (Richard Eastham). The brink is attained when Mary shows up to play tug of war with Bing for custody of their ten-year-old son (Malcolm Brod-rick), a sensitive lad who loves his papa, hates his mamma, and utters sagacities, mature beyond belief, that would help resolve the mess if only the squabbling adults would listen to him. Also giving Crosby daily advice is his lawyer's girl Friday (Inger Stevens), as coy a baggage as ever hung heart on sleeve.

It would take King Solomon sitting on a problem of child custody to straighten out this sordid little tangle--and he is exactly the genius invoked to turn the trick. As soon as Malcolm mentions the story of Solomon and the two mothers to his father, Bing realizes what a covetous oaf he has been, agrees to share the boy with Mary. This is all for the best because Crosby now has Inger, too.

The Pride and the Passion (Kramer; United Artists) succumbs to a common failing in modern movies--the curse of unrestrained bigness. Mightily successful as sheer spectacle. The Pride almost succeeds in personalizing its heroics, but its humans tend to get lost in what amounts to runaway mass movement. Not so strangely, the movie's true hero and source of its emotional appeal is a monster cannon whose ornate bronze undergoes triumphs and mortifications that flesh could never endure.

Producer-Director Stanley Kramer ranged expensively (budget: $4,000,000) over much of Spain in shooting his brave try at an epic. To woo realism, he faked virtually nothing; even his big gun. an awesome example of the perversity of inanimate objects, is actually what it seems. To give his film size, Kramer set it against Spain's brooding mountain grandeur and its trackless plains, its magnificent cathedrals and haunted, fairy-tale towns. He enlisted the services of Dictator Franco's army and thousands of Spanish extras.

The movie's individuals are seen microscopically as mere cells of the whole. The problem is to drag, float and worry The Gun (recast from C. S. Forester's novel of that name) halfway across Spain to the walled city of Avila. The year is 1810. The objective: to bring down the wall, storm the breach and recapture Avila from the headquarters garrison of

Napoleon's occupation forces. The cannon, a beautiful three-ton jewel of muzzle-loading artillery, falls into the hands of an illiterate guerrilla chieftain (Frank Sinatra) after being abandoned by Spain's routed army regulars. Sharing his ordeal of moving the gun overland, through French-commanded passes and along sen-tried back roads, is a weird ally, a spick-and-span British navy gunnery expert (Gary Grant), who, believing that war is a gentleman's affair, is appalled by the barbaric tactics of Sinatra's uncouth band. Italy's Sophia Loren, as a busty errand girl, is a dispensable part in a story that Forester correctly conceived as all-male. The Pride's real passion would far better have aimed solely at the conquest of Avila; Operation Sophia is pointless reconnaissance.

Sinatra--despite spitcurl bangs and a put-on accent--expectably works hardest, acts best. Captain Grant suavely keeps trying not to remind himself of Horatio Hornblower. So they finally get the gun to the long shadow of Avila's wall, blast their opening at 1.600 yards, and sliding in on their own blood, overwhelm the hated occupiers. Thus Producer Kramer conquers Napoleon's forces. But somehow the whir of the cameras often seems as loud as the thunderous cannonades. It evidently takes more than dedication, cooperative multitudes and $4,000,000 to shoot history in the face.

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