fled in Tooth

and Claw
expect anything Christmassy about this week's films, It is a case of " red in tooth and claw," first on Broadway and then in darkest Africa—and civilisation comes out even redder than the
jungle.
After last week's minor lappings on the seashore, we have had a real pounding on the shingle.
ALL ABOUT EVE (Getsioete AND MARBLE ARCH PAVILION) Director : Joseph L. Mankiewicz THIS runs for two hours and a half—and it is practically all talk. Brilliant talk, brittle talk, cynical talk ; the sort of talk you hear among theatrical folk who never stop for an answer: egocentric talk; all the words winged with little knives.
When I saw the film, whole sentences were lost in the laughter of the audience. And that ought to be recommendation in itself.
The red tooth and claw in this case belongs to a young woman played by Anne Baxter with a sort of steely competence--who is determined to fight her way, claw her way, to the top of the acting profession; to use those who can he of any help to her and then tear thorn to pieces.
Her first stepping stone is a middle-aged " star" of the theatre (Bette Davis); her second a drama
critic (George Sanders). She is a fraud, a liar. a blackmailer. She wears the face of innocence and the
garb of humility. And she wins hands down.
TRICKS AND YOUTH
She receives the palm of her profession — the Sarah Siddons award for distinguished achievement in the theatre.
A savage enough commentary on
the successful actress. How true no one but those right inside the profession can tell.
But how true the fear, indeed the terror, which the older actress has of her young understudy. The understudy. whose age is just right for the part—who has been studying how to play the part at close quarters and who now has all the tricks to give—and youth beside.
This is indeed the most credible
thing about the film. Bette Davis has never done anything more convincing than her portrait of the older actress — impulsive, peevish, fretful. moody, generous, jealous and hitter when she tastes the dead sea fruit of success grown stale.
The third character to be reckoned with is the blase. drama columnist (I think the distinction must be made between a columnist and a critic), and this is quite magnificently played by George Sanders. A poison pen come to life who sees a soulmate in the ruthless young climber and secures her for himself.
Two other women are concerned in this pasteboard drama—this saga of behind-the-scenes. They are the playwright's wife (Celeste Holm)— and no one can adorn a tale more tastefully than Miss Holm — and Thelma Ritter as an ageing exvaudeville actress turned dresser who disappears a third of the way through, quite unaccountably and I think mistakenly.
LONG BUT GOOD A curious flaw in the casting was to make the two men in the case— Gary Merrill, as the "romantic" interest, and Hugh Marlowe, as the playwright—so similar in type as to be quite confusing in the earlier stages.
is this two hours and-a-half an endurance test on the part of the audience? It was not for me. It won't be for anyone who likes to know or to think they know what goes on behind the scenes, and who wonders if it is a case of sour grapes —or just the law of the jungle.
KING SOLOMON'S MINES (EMPIRE)
Directors Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton ON reflection, give me this jungle of lions and tigers, stampeding wild beasts, of crocodiles and rhinos, gorgeous undulating giraffes in most poetic flight and zebras streaking across the bush.
It is far healthier and more honest than the human one.
If you remember your Rider Haggard you can forget it again, for this version of Alan Quartermaine's white hunter exploits goes off on a
line of its own. But that should worry no one, for it is magnificent spectacle, photographed by an array of Technicolor cameras that "Darkest Africa" and the tribes who took part will remember for many a long day.
I think there can he no section of wild life in the continent that has not been " shot "—and brilliantly— even to a crocodile emerging from its egg. I loved it all.
Stewart Granger, playing better than ever he played in British films, is Quartermaine. The two he leads on this fantastic safari are Deborah Kerr (who wears a permanent wave that defies every weather hazard of !.ush, torrent or sandstorm), and Richard Carlson as her brother.
Did I say there was no Christmas note in these films ? I was wrong.
Here, in a roundabout way, is one :
The directors found it difficult to make the natives understand that they were taking part in a story until they hit on the idea of copying the mime technique adopted by the Catholic missionaries of the district in teaching the natives the story of the Nativity.
Then it was all plain-sailing. Faint—hut still a note.