Anna and the King of Siam (20th Century-Fox) flies in the face of established Hollywood precedent by ignoring Young Love, and proves that a movie can be lively entertainment even if boy doesn't get—or even meet—girl.
Set in the 1860s, the film is a fairly literal transcription of Margaret Landon's 1944 best-selling biography. Anna (Irene Dunne) is a purposeful widow, handsome in her crinolines, who arrives in Siam clutching her young son by the hand. Having firmly decided against marrying again, she is taking a job as schoolmarm in the gaudy, uncivilized court of King Mongkut (Rex Harrison). The King's domestic arrangements are already pretty well set, what with his hundreds of wives and concubines and an estimated 67 children. There is never a hint of romance between Anna and her difficult new boss. But their relationship is complex, mature, always threatening to explode.
The willful, half-barbaric King yearns to improve himself and his backward country—but without once relaxing his regal prerogatives. Nor does he wish to accept too much help from someone who is not only a foreigner but also a lowly woman. To hold and secure her job, Anna has to perform daily miracles of common sense, dignity, humor, forbearance and strength of character. As played by Irene Dunne and Britain's Rex Harrison (in his first Hollywood movie), the clash of these two kinetic personalities should be more fun for an adult audience than the standard maneuverings toward the classical clinch.
After skimping on Love in the plot, Anna's manufacturers tried to even the score by throwing in an extra helping of Glamor on sets and costumes. One of the first postwar productions to splurge on lavish, prewar-style props, the picture was shot over five acres of lot covered with $300,000 worth (pressagents' valuation) of Oriental rococo background. Notable eye-filling items: the King's four gold-&-diamond crowns ($84,000) and 23 silk-&-brocade costumes ($23,000); a coronation scene costing $80,000; a well-filled harem stocked with the loveliest of 200 lovely extras; Linda Darnell in the Siamese equivalent of a sarong.
Specter of the Rose (Republic) is what happened when Republic handed Writer-Director-Producer Ben Hecht the price of a horse opera ($200,000) and left him strictly alone to create—if he could—a work of art. The picture rates solid A for effort, something between A and low D for quality. Parts of it will delight a limited audience.
The story is a Hecht original: a great dancer (Ivan Kirov), subject to fits of homicidal insanity, marries a budding ballerina (Viola Essen), who hopes that his dancing and her love will work a cure. Great Teacher Judith Anderson and threadbare Impresario Michael Chekhov, torn between terror and balletomania, hover unhappily in the wings. Another sideliner, Poet Lionel Stander, grates out Mr. Hecht's own highly debatable views on Love & Art, and dashes an occasional gruelly tear from his granitic eye. To climax a triumphant tour, the dancer's mind finally cracks and he turns his own (and mad Dancer Vaslav Nijinsky's) great role, Le Spectre de la Rose, into a dance of death.