Torch Song (MGM) should make a lot of Joan Crawford's fans uncomfortable. Joan is miscast as a belligerent musi-comedy star who wears her heart on her fist; the fist is directed mainly at Michael Wilding. Fortunately, the camera decides most of the time that it is more fun to look at Actress Crawford's remarkable legs. Even this is an obvious mistake, for by reducing a performer of Joan's experience and hard-won skills to the cheesecake class, the picture stints her of the human qualities she has developed. Best scene: one in which Marjorie Rambeau, as Joan's mother, a merry old frump, hands around some free advice to her lovelorn daughter, and then amalgamates a ten-oz. glass of beer in one unforgettable chugalug.
The Captain's Paradise (London Films; Lopert) is a wonderfully funny little immorality play about how the Old Adam tries once again to have his apple and eat it too. The Adam in this instance is a middle-class Englishman who looks as safe as porridge—until the moviegoer looks again and sees that the part is being played by Alec Guinness, who, in recent films (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Promoter), has been hilariously demonstrating that the dullest-seeming people may be the most fascinating monsters.
This time, Guinness plays the captain of a ferry steamer plying between Gibraltar and Morocco. A quite ordinary fellow to all appearances, he is what might be described as a commuting bigamist.
On the Gibraltar side, the captain goes soberly afoot from his ship to a conventional middle-class cottage. There he is cozily greeted by wife No. i, a plain but devoted homebody (Celia Johnson) who puts out his pipe and porter, serves up his favorite dumplings, and answers dutifully to his call for "beddy-byes" at 10 p.m. Otherwise, as the captain explains, he would be "no use on the bridge."
On the African side, the captain quick-changes into dove-grey flannels and a snap-brim felt, darts to a waiting taxi and heads, by way of the flower shop, for a glassily sinful flat in one of the tonier hotels. There he is passionately greeted by wife No. 2, a sexy, black-haired baggage (Yvonne de Carlo) who throws the cootch around in nightclubs, guzzles champagne, and takes moonlight plunges in the Mediterranean.
So it goes for years, with nobody the wiser. One night with one wife, one with the other. "Two women," as the captain congratulates himself, "each with half of the things a man wants." It's all too good to last, of course—so good that it is worth the price of admission to find out what goes wrong.
As the captain, Actor Guinness is consistently at the height of his own special comedy style. Appearing to be acting not at all, he creates a sort of emotional vacuum at the center of his role into which the spectator's feelings are drawn. Guinness always waits that extra moment until his audience sees what obviously must be done, and then he does it, almost as if he were taking direction from his public. It is a remarkably effective technique, and never more so than when he unexpectedly crosses the audience up.