The New Pictures

The Devil Makes Three (MGM) tries to dress up a postwar plot about a new German Fuehrer with some very old-hat movie melodrama.

The would-be Hitler (Claus Clausen) is a pianist-entertainer in a postwar Munich nightclub where Pier Angeli is employed as a hostess. When a U.S. Army Air Force captain (Gene Kelly) becomes romantically involved with Pier, he soon finds that he is also deeply involved in a political underground movement.

The Devil Makes Three has any number of chases by automobile, motorcycle and on foot. It also has some effective-on-the-spot scenes filmed along the Munich-Salzburg Autobahn and at Hitler's bombed-out Adlerhorst at Berchtesgaden. Gene Kelly, without his dancing shoes, turns out to be a relaxed, likable actor, and wide-eyed Pier Angeli brings an appealing, girlish charm to the role of the Fraulein. But The Devil Makes Three makes little more than another run-of-the-movie-mill thriller out of its theme.

The Merry Widow (MGM) is the fourth Hollywood version of the famed old (1905) Franz Lehar operetta.* This time Lana Turner is the wealthy Widow Radek from Hoboken, and Fernando Lamas is Count Danilo of Marshovia, who is assigned to marry her in order to save his country from bankruptcy, an act of cold-blooded patriotism that is complicated by hot-blooded love.

Lana, in Technicolor, makes a fetching widow in an assortment of black lace undies. Lamas leaps about energetically and sings five tuneful Lehar songs, including Girls, Girls, Girls, Villa, and I'm Going to Maxim's. There are gypsy dances, a Parisian can-can and a lavish Merry Widow waltz, as well as a good deal of hand kissing, heel clicking, flower tossing, serenades under balconies and debauchery at Maxim's with Lolo, Frou Frou, Mimi, Yvette and Nicolette. Everyone works very hard at being gay, but somehow this Merry Widow is not always as lighthearted as it might be, perhaps because the makers of the picture tell the story as if they meant it. Valuable touches of insouciance are provided by Una Merkel as the widow's maid and Richard Haydn as a Marshovian baron.

Lure of the Wilderness (20th Century-Fox) is a title presumably meant to describe Jean Peters, a shapely swamp girl who runs around Georgia's Okefenokee mudflats dressed in tight-fitting buckskin shirt and trousers and armed with a bow & arrow. Jean lives in the swamp with her father (Walter Brennan), who has been hiding out from the law for eight years because he once killed a man in self-defense. One day a handsome youth (Jeffrey Hunter) ventures into the Okefenokee to search for his missing dog, and stumbles on Jean. What is this strange, perplexing passion that smites the child of nature? Old Swamp Philosopher Brennan unravels it for her: "You're a girl and he's a boy."

Lure of the Wilderness has some colorful shots of the Okefenokee scenery and the swamp's crocodiles, snakes, owls, bears and boars. Among the human actors, the one who seems most at home in the swamp is Walter Brennan, in a repeat of his role in the 1941 Swamp Water, of which Lure of the Wilderness is a rather soggy remake.

The Ring (King Bros.; United Artists) is a simple, straight-forward story of racial discrimination with a harsh setting: a Los Angeles prizefight ring. A young Mexican-American with a chip on his shoulder becomes a boxer "because it pays to be somebody." He turns professional, is badly beaten in the ring, and decides to quit boxing because he comes to realize that there are better ways to fight for respect from the "Anglos."

An unassuming, generally effective little picture, The Ring has some brisk fight scenes. It also makes a few telling points about intolerance with some blunt sequences, shot in & around actual Los Angeles locations, of discrimination against Mexican-Americans in drive-in restaurants, bars and skating rinks. Lalo Rios as the boy, Rita Moreno as his girl and Gerald Mohr as a prizefight manager play their parts naturally. The Ring is no main bout, but it is a thoroughly satisfactory preliminary.

* The others: a 1912 two-reeler with Alma Rubens and Wallace Reid, a 1925 edition with Mae Murray and John Gilbert, a 1934 version with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier.

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