• U.S.

Cinema: Two Imports

2 minute read
TIME

A Tale of Five Women (Grand National; United Artists) was filmed in five European countries with five different actresses, directors, screenwriters and cameramen. The result does not quite add up to one good picture.

The film is based on a case of amnesia curiously contracted by an R.A.F. officer (Bonar Colleano) who takes off from a chandelier while celebrating in a Berlin bistro. Believed to be an American, he is shipped back to a U.S. rehabilitation center. There a pretty magazine editor (Barbara Kelly) finds a clue to his past in a photograph of a child and banknotes from five European countries, each with the signature of a different girl.

Sponsored by the magazine under the catch-line “Mystery of the Missing Memory,” the amnesia victim sets out on a European tour to find his supposed wife and child and to establish his identity. After meeting all five girls (played by Italy’s Gina Lollobrigida, Hungary’s Eva Bartok, Germany’s Karin Himbold, France’s Anne Vernon and England’s Lana Morris), he discovers what has been obvious all along: he is 1) unmarried, 2) in love with the magazine editor.

Though the backgrounds change, all the girls look pretty much the same in a succession of tight-fitting outfits and loosely written and directed episodes. The airman’s country-bumpkin reaction to the leading ladies and the five locales has neither originality nor wit. Typical bit of dialogue: “London—good-looking city, huh? I wish it wuz mine!”

The Woman in Question (J. Arthur Rank; Columbia) poses the riddle of who strangled Astra (Jean Kent), the blonde, bosomy fortuneteller at a British seaside resort. The suspects: a Cockney housekeeper (Hermione Baddeley), Astra’s sister (Susan Shaw), her fiance (Dirk Bogarde), a jealous sailor (John McCallum), an elderly bird-shop proprietor (Charles Victor).

Before the murder is solved, the quintet has given the police conflicting accounts of Astra ranging from charming lady to alcoholic strumpet. Like the Japanese-made Rashomon (TIME, Jan. 7), The Woman in Question is a series of variations on a theme; but unlike Rashomon, it has no cinematic point of view and makes no particular point. With its overabundant dialogue, The Woman in Question finally becomes a murder movie that talks itself to death.

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