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The success of this inexpensive ($1,000,000), unpretentious picture reads a useful lesson to Hollywood's powerful "Vienna Lobby," a rapidly growing group of psychiatric doctrinaires who seem to feel that an alienist's progress chart makes the best story board. Fear Strikes Out is not the history of an illness but the story of a human life; it does not attempt to acquaint the mind with theories and statistics but to educate the heart with compassion and understanding. And by these means it will probably do more than anything Hollywood has ever found in its bag of psychiatricks to teach the general public how a man much like any other can be driven out of his mind, and how with care and wisdom he can be restored to reason.
Chief credit for this contribution goes to Scriptwriters Ted Berkman and Raphael Blair, who have shaped a formless book into tight, dramatic scenes. Director Robert Mulligan, a 31 -year-old veteran of television, has seconded them shrewdly, and Actor Maiden finds in the father frightening depths of pain, confusion and animal sadness.
But the man who will probably get the loudest cheers from the public grandstands is 24-year-old Actor Perkins. In his first starring role he ranges from insane violence to romantic tenderness to stylish farce with an ease that has left no doubt in Hollywood's mind that he holds strong cards as an actor. However, Actor Perkins' ace in the hole is charm — a gangling, gulp-and-golly, never-been-kissed sort of charm that seems likely to answer one of Hollywood's more troubling questions: Where is the next Jimmy Stewart coming from?
The Red Balloon (Lamorisse; Lopert). Pascal had a big balloon. Its cheeks were red as a pippin. And everywhere that Pascal went, the balloon was sure to slip in. It followed him to school one day, which made an awful stench. It made the children laugh and play to see a balloon in French.
As a matter of fact, moviegoers of all ages will find themselves laughing, and sometimes sighing, as Pascal and his friend pursue their private life in a world that does not seem to understand the care and feeding of young balloons — and maybe not of small boys, either.
In this 34-minute cinemallegory, made in Paris by Producer Albert Lamorisse and starring his six-year-old son Pascal, every loose string of the narrative leads somehow to an inflated symbol in the Gallic manner. But how can anybody be annoyed with symbols (even though they do not pop as pertly as an old symbol-master like Rene Clair might wish) that are invariably lipstick-red and lighter-than-air?
True Story of Jesse James (20th Century-Fox) is that 75 years after he was done to death by that "dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard," he is still robbing the people—though nowadays, as moviegoers with any sense of historic irony may remark, it is the long arm of the banking community that runs through the gun sleeve of the 19th century's most storied bank robber. In the last 35 years, the moneymen have cheerfully financed at least a dozen pictures* about the character who was once their deadliest enemy, an enthusiasm perhaps best explained by the fact that from this crude movie alone the banks will make ten times as much money out of Jesse James as he ever made out of them.