New Picture

Short Cut to Hell (Paramount). He, mechanically: "I'm not a person. I'm a gun . . . It's my trade. My profession. I shoot people." She, tenderly: "There's so much more to you than you'll admit. 1 know it ... Your hands . . . they could be the hands of an artist . . ."

When this sort of thing was offered to U.S. moviegoers in the first film version (1942) of Graham Greene's thriller, This Gun for Hire, many of them were deeply impressed. It was felt that Hollywood had passed a milestone and that He (Alan Ladd) and She (Veronica Lake) were the latest and the greatest. In the interval, however, most customers have learned, from Hollywood's mistakes, the difference between the touchingly insane and the pathetically inane, and this remake is less apt to frazzle nerves than to tickle funny bones.

Still, the picture has its moments, and the plot is still fresh and Greene enough. The two young leading players (Robert Ivers and Georgann Johnson) are less than sensational, but they show enough talent and training to make the early Ladd and Lake look comparatively sad. And Director James Cagney, in his first appearance behind the camera, manages to beauty-spot a few of the bare places with some characteristic Cagney touches.

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