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Arabian Nights (Universal) would be just another oldtime sheik picture but for 1) sleek Maria Montez, 2) Technicolor. The new year will be Technicolor's year, and in Technicolor Miss Montez will help make it happy.
Sophisticated Producer Walter Wanger has used Technicolor to create a fabulous spectacle, but he does not take his work too seriously. The tale pokes fun at itself and slyly cuckolds the Hays office. In Nights there is a tubby old boy who claims to have been "the Bag of Bagdad." There is an Aladdin (John Qualen) whose companions jeer: "You've told that lamp story so often you believe it yourself." There is a Sinbad (Shemp Howard) whose refrain is: "This calls to mind an experience I once had as a sailor." And there is a harem which does bumps and grinds and makes the standard Hollywood harem look as well clad as a winter army on the Russian steppes.
The picture is full of fire, galloping steeds and sword play—most of the playing by copper-torsoed Jon Hall, who plays Haroun-Al-Raschid to Miss Montez' Sherazade. But that is not all. The picture is, besides, an unusually effective Technicolor job. Best shots: the play of sunlight and shadow across the rich bronze desert sands.
Arabian Nights is a forerunner of a flood of Technicolor pictures scheduled to come from Hollywood in this year. Last year Hollywood made 25 feature films in color, some 10% of its total footage. It now has 36 in production or preparation. One big studio (20th Century-Fox) plans to make 25% of its features in color. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corp., which processes color film for all the studios, is turning out some 7,000,000 feet a month. But not many of the feet will be as pretty as Miss Montez'.
Journey for Margaret (M.G.M.).
There are two Margarets. Both are about five. One of them was orphaned in the 1940 bombings of London, was adopted and brought to the U.S. by War Correspondent William L. White, who wrote a book about her. The other is a girl named Maxine ("Margaret") O'Brien who plays the part of Margaret White in a screen translation of the book. Between the story of the one and the acting of the other, Journey is one of the most appealing pictures of the war.
The newspaperman in the film (Robert Young) meets Margaret when she arrives at a London refuge for orphaned children. She stands stiffly, a strange little figure with a tall stocking cap, the shell of a magnesium (incendiary) bomb slung on a cord around her neck, ceaselessly rubbing her dry eyes with her palms. The lady in charge (Fay Bainter) suggests that she may cry if she wishes. Margaret: "You won't smack me if I beller?" "No." Margaret begins to sob, finally relieves her pent-up tension and fears in wild, convulsing wails.