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Experiment Perilous (RKO-Radio), a not very thrilling thriller, is the story of a demented Austrian aristocrat (Paul Lukas) who meets, marries and sophisticates a once-pastoral Vermont girl (Hedy Lamarr), then proceeds to poison the mind of her child against her and all but destroy her sanity and her life. He is foiled just in time by George Brent, who takes her back to Vermont, where she and her child rapidly recuperate.
It is a little hard to understand why the picture falls so flat, with so fine an actor as Mr. Lukas in it, as well as intelligent writing, direction and production. A partial explanation may be the fact that everyone paid too-loving attention to the film's chief virtues, which are nice to look at but are not the substance of good melodrama. The virtues: 1) some wintry Manhattan street scenes; 2) a memorable setting and costuming of the turn of the century; 3) Hedy Lamarr.
Miss Lamarr, though inclined to stolidity as an actress, is one of the great beauties of her generation. Her admirers will find her especially well worth watching in this film, for she is far more delicate and responsive in her role than usual, and she has never before been made up, gowned, lighted and photographed to such dazzling advantage.
Winged Victory (20th Century-Fox), Moss Hart's crisply flamboyant salute to the Air Forces, comes to the screen substantially unchanged in cast, story and general feeling. Like the original play, it is as immaculately robust as if it had just stepped out of a barracks shower; indeed, it would gain considerably if it did not so often suggest a Boy Scout Jamboree. Like the original, too, it generates among spectators the sort of friendliness normally reserved for amateurs, since all of its male performers are Air Forces men and the profits go to Army charities. But every one of the players was a more or less seasoned professional of stage, screen or radio before he got into the armed services, and acts accordingly. And the movie, like the play, is as noisy, as expertly put together, and as smooth-running as a bomber.
In some respects the film improves on its original. While its heroes are still at home in their small towns, itching to get into the Air Forces, they are earnest, likable, and about as interesting as so many Rover Boys. But once they are caught up in the tremendously intricate and fascinating process of training and testing and rejection and promotion, cinema's superior realism comes into its own. The best parts of Winged Victory are less like drama than like document, except that documentary films are seldom half as well-made or a tenth as enjoyable.
Jammin' the Blues (Warner) is hailed by Walter Winchell as "a new sort of camera teknik." On the Warner lot, too, people have a feeling that the picture may bring short-subjects a new lease on life.
The film was made by LIFE'S famed fast-action photographer, Gjon Mili. Last summer he assembled some of the artists, Negroes all (save Barney Kessel),* who were playing Los Angeles, got them jamming on a Warner sound stage. Result: two numbers (On the Sunny Side of the Street and Jam Session) which, if not the best that hot players can do, are pretty certainly the most honest, down-to-earth popular music yet recorded for the screen.