The New Pictures

Moonfleet (M.G.M) has a fine midnight flavor of yawning graves, skeletons, gibbeted men, ghouls and things that go bump in the dark. When the sun is shining, the action is further embellished with slashing swordplay, wild chases over fen and moor, and an Soft, descent into the deepest well in Dorsetshire. The CinemaScope thriller is based on J. Meade Falkner's classic adventure story of British smugglers, and just as the novel itself was reminiscent of Robert Louis Stevenson, so the movie faithfully echoes other good movies: the graveyard encounter between boy and convict in Great Expectations is almost exactly reproduced, while the affectionate bond between a rogue and youngster that illumined both Kidnapped and Treasure Island is duplicated in Moonfleet by Rapscallion Stewart Granger and Orphan Jon Whiteley.

The plot turns upon a lost diamond of great price, but mostly the film is a string of lively, unrelated escapades. Granger plays the picaresque gentleman with style, and seems equally at home embracing a flamenco dancer, dodging thrown knives, or winning a duel with a halberd-swinging smuggler. Jon Whiteley, who distinguished himself in last year's The Little Kidnappers (TIME, Sept. 6), proves again that Britain still has the world monopoly on believable child stars.

The Great Adventure (Sucksdorff; Louis de Rochemont Associates). A pool in the forest waits in stillness at first light. The mists are bodied silences. Suddenly, a bird sings, clears his morning throat and tries again. A dewdrop tumbles from its cobweb couch. Fox cubs yawn and blink in their cozy ground, while overhead the lilies languidly unclench. On the nearest farm the cock insults creation, which unexpectedly replies. A vixen darts among the spluttering hens and carries off her breakfast.

So, as with terror and loveliness a day begins in the woods of central Sweden, begins a picture that with passion, awe and tender intuition takes the watcher deep into the primeval forest, and there turns him loose among the beasts of the field. The film was made under fearful difficulties by Arne Sucksdorff (Struggle for Survival, Shadows on the Snow), a 38-year-old Swede who is clearly one of the world's finest film artists.

Disdaining a soft success with trick shots and trick cutting, Sucksdorff stalked the bogs and thickets around his Swedish farm, lying in wait day after day and often most of the night in hope of catching the real right thing. He spent 72 nights in the field during three consecutive Aprils before he found the wood grouse fighting in a satisfactory light. He once waited 28 hours beneath a tree in order to capture a lynx when it came down, and he built 36 kinds of covert before he discovered an adequate way to hide and shelter himself and his camera. The film took three years to complete, cost more ($120,000) than Sucksdorff had in pocket. His chief backer: Dag Hammarskjold. Secretary-General of the U.N.

A few of the images:

P:An eye as vast and luminous as a summer moon looms through a wheat stubble, and a long moment passes before the onlooker realizes that the hare it belongs to sits throbbing in terror of a stalking fox.

P:As jet planes thunder in the sky, two owls sit thunderstruck upon a tree, looking like two elderly British industrialists who have just been informed of Aneurin Bevan's election to their club.

P:Fox and otter, puppies both, dart and tangle in a hilarious game of tag. The nature episodes are woven together in a graceful little story of two small boys (Anders Norborg and Kjell Sucksdorff, son of the director) who catch an otter and hide him in the barn from their parents. The children are as innocent and lovely as the animals, and Sucksdorff has had the wit to let them behave without making them act. His tact, indeed, is everywhere a delight. He sees through his camera's glass, not darkly, but almost face to face with all creation, and it was in that spirit that he one day spoke his creed: "I refuse to rape reality."

Five Against the House (Columbia), like an inept outfielder, juggles a good idea and then drops it. The film starts off in a blizzard of wisecracks as four college boys, on their way back to school, stop off for a few hours of fun in Reno. The brightest of them (Kerwin Mathews) is told that the gambling hells are burglarproof and, just for kicks, decides to mastermind a perfect robbery. Of course, he explains to Fellow Students Brian Keith and Alvy Moore, they will give the money back after pulling the job.

Then things begin to get sticky. Noble-minded Guy Madison and his torch-singer sweetheart, Kim Novak, are innocently roped into the plot, while College Boy Keith proves more larcenous than larky; it is endlessly explained that his flawed character results from unspecified, but obviously dreadful, Korean war experiences. The robbery plan proves to be nearly as unconvincing as the film itself, but works well enough for Keith to get away with the swag, thus enabling Hero Madison to scramble after him in the final chase sequence. Educational note: in a monologue intended to establish his high I.Q., Student Mathews confidently assures his impressed classmates that ancient Troy was a city in Greece.

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