The New Pictures

The Wild Heart (Powell-Pressburger; RKO Radio), a picturization of Mary Webb's 1917 novel, Gone to Earth, lets passion spin the plot in turn-of-the-century England. Jennifer Jones is a simple child of nature who likes to cuddle up with her pet fox. Just when she has settled down to a calm marriage with a parson (Cyril Cusack), along comes Squire David Farrar, a virile type, who whisks her off to his outsize estate. But Farrar has a crude habit of fox hunting, so Jennifer soon cools toward him. The ending is drenched in predictable melodramatics.

The Wild Heart often turns out tame in its preordained plotting, but the story has been imaginatively told by Britain's pro-ducing-directing-writing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes).* The picture has a warm, earthy flavor with handsomely photographed Technicolor scenes of the rolling Shropshire countryside. And a strong cast helps cover up some of the story weaknesses: David Farrar swaggers masterfully as the horsy squire, and Cyril Cusack is appropriately pale and wan as the deserted parson. But it is in Jennifer Jones's lush, wide-eyed performance as the passionate girl that The Wild Heart beats most strongly on the screen.

Clash by Night (Wald-Krasna; RKO Radio) is a vapid variation on the old triangle. Based on Clifford Odets' 1941 play about a Staten Island husband who kills his wife's lover, the picture adds a sunshiny ending, a Pacific-coast fishing-town setting, and some fishy dramatics.

For purposes of movie morality, the husband (Paul Douglas), after unsuccessfully attempting to strangle the other man (Robert Ryan), understandingly takes back his suddenly repentant wife (Barbara Stanwyck). As Barbara unconvincingly regenerated, the drama degenerates. And in Fritz Lang's turgid direction. Clash by Night emerges as a pretentious movie melodrama swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.

Paul Douglas plays the cloddish but honest fisherman husband with a good deal of earnestness, while Barbara Stanwyck gives one of her regulation good performances of a bad girl. As the cynical lover, Robert Ryan plays a motion-picture projectionist who speaks some grade-B movie dialogue, e.g., to Barbara: "Your husband's the salt of the earth, but he's not the right seasoning for you." Also on hand, in a minor role: shapely Marilyn Monroe. as a fish-cannery employee who bounces around in a succession of slacks, bathing suits and sweaters.

* Filmed in 1949, The Wild Heart has been delayed by a variety of production and post-production problems. The horsy set of the town of Much Wenlock (pop. 2,087). where much of the movie was filmed, was uncooperative during the shooting because of the novel's anti-fox hunting message. In 1950, dissatisfied with the finished product, Producer David O. Selznick (who got the western-hemisphere rights to the picture in return for allowing wife Jennifer Jones to appear in it) sued London Films Producer Alexander Korda to enjoin release of the film overseas. A British law court decided against Selznick. Last year Selznick hired Director Rouben Mamoulian to reshoot almost a third of the picture in Hollywood for U.S. release.

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