Fifth Avenue!

on the ranch
RANCHO NOTORIOUS (ODEON, LEICESTER-SQUARE: Certificate A)
Director: Fritz Lang
A NEW terror has been added to Westerns. It is the singing commentary. While student orchestras follow the horses and sharpshooters out into the prairie and the desert, drowning even the sound of the horses' hooves, " Rancho Notorious" gets a bassbaritone to link up the action, chanting a mournful dirge about murder and revenge.
In a way, I suppose, this makes the Western more of a horse opera than ever.
The presence of Marlene Dietrich, golden hair expensively (and most modernly) permed, faultlessly tailored in expertly-cut jeans and skirt Wirth Avenue), made up as no 1870 charmer ever was, also puts a dash of pantomime into it.
There* is one shot of Marlene Dietrich sitting on a gate wearing the aforesaid outfit, topped by a smart felt hat that made me think at once of Aladdin — and a lovely one at that.
With the orchestra and Miss Dietrich, not to speak of the singing commentary, putting a barricade between us and reality, it says something that at times all the impedimenta is pushed aside and the story gets a look in.
The revenge department is in the care of Arthur Kennedy, who as a law-abiding citizen — Verne Haskell —turns hunter when his fiancee is murdered by a hold-up man. As he starts put from Wyoming he pieces his evidence together from hearsay, with our old friend the flashback taking charge at each stage.
Sure enough the trail leads to Altar(!) Keane (Marlene Dietrich), who, believe it or not, controls the notorious ranch of the title — the headquarters of bandits who in return for her hospitality and protection, turn over 10 per cent. of their loot. And of course among these is the murderer.
Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer (who plays the part of Altar's protector and lover) and Marlene Dietrich are among the most intelligent people acting on the films today. They couldn't act badly if they tried.
When the orchestra stops and "the silence flows swiftly backwards" there arc effective moments, especially that meeting of hunter and murderer in the bar—with its unexpected climax.
The gunplay at the end is like a mad game of chess, with guns pointing in so many directions that it is a wonder anyone is left to tell the tale.
-1 he camera-work, in Technicolor, is good, with a fine skyscape and many of those long vistas of Ameni can landscape which get better and better with every outdoor film Hollywood makes.
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (EMPIRE; Certificate U) Directors : Gene Kelly and StanIy Gonen
fIENE Kelly. Pvith honours thick
and fast upon him for his work in " American in Paris." has earned his promotion to co-directorship of this cheerful excursion back into the raffish 'twenties, when Hollywood was shaken to its foundations by the dethronement of the silent film in favour of the talking pictures.
But the average cinerna-goer will be more interested in the allcoloured singing and especially dancing sequences which Gene Kelly devises and executes, and in the ballet numbers, which also bear his trade-mark.
His best solo number is one which justifies the title. for he actually does perform it in drenching (Hollywood) rain, splashing in and out of gutters and winning the battle against the deltute every time. With Cyd Charisse as his partner. he performs one of the fantastic, limitless horizon numbers in which a long chiffon scarf waves across the screen like a plume of vapour—very surrealist and all that.
Reality is supplied by the youthful Debbie Reynolds. and the brassy silent star is played with grating voice and appropriate dumbness by Jean Hagen. Donald O'Connor, one of Hollywood's best youthful clowns, gets the best chance he has had so far as Mr. Kelly's partner.
It is all very well for the talkies to sneer at the old silent days, but the silent pictures weren't all as silly as the one we see interpolated here.
THE DARK PAGE (NEW GALLERY: Certificate A). Director: Phil Karlson.
THIS belongs in the gruesome category of film fare—murders, morgues, autopsies (hair and skin in the murdered woman's fingernails. and all that).
And who do you think is the murderer this time? Why, the editor of a New York newspaper.
True,. it is one of those low-grade tabloids which can never find big enough type to print those headlines stretching right across the front page. As in all American newspaper stories, everyone is in a breathless hurry and of course there is our old friend the once brilliant reporter who keeps swallowing dark brown fluid in comfortless bars.
1 he situation is piquant enough— with the star reporter. who has been trained in story-getting by his hero, the murdering editor. actually digging up the evidence bit by bit and rushing in to his chief for yet one more pat on the back.
Rugged-voiced Roderick Crawford, as the editor, barks his way into the trap and does some mighty silly things if he really wants to keep a respectable distance from the electric chair.