The New Pictures

Pepe (G.S.-Posa Films; Columbia). Cantinflas, the 49-year-old son of a Mexican mail carrier, who in Charlie Chaplin's opinion has become "the world's greatest comedian," is a shy little ragamuffin with wide-apart innocent eyes like a newborn burro's, a mouth like a long, amusing sentence, and a silly little mustache that sets it off in tiny, hairy quotation marks. From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego he is almost as popular as orange soda, and in Mexico he is the greatest national hero since Pancho Villa. His movies make millions, his baggy-pants burlesque of the bullfight draws the biggest crowds at any corrida, his tongue-tied twaddling and self-swallowing sentences have added a new verb (cantinflear) to the Spanish language.

U.S. moviegoers, who last saw Cantinflas as David Niven's valet in Around the World in 80 Days (TIME, Oct. 29, 1956), can now see him again in Pepe, a picture that noisily invites comparison with Mike Todd's Oscar-copping travelogue, and severely suffers by the comparison. Like Todd, Producer-Director George Sidney (Pal Joey) signed up Cantinflas and a couple of second-magnitude stars (Dan Dailey, Shirley Jones) for the major parts, then went shopping for big-name bargains, bought up more than two dozen* of them (reported price: a Rolls a role), shot a scene or two with each, and spliced the scenes into the picture whenever it started to get dull. For the first two hours the technique works almost as well as it did in ATW180D, but Pepe goes on and on and on (for 3 hr. 15 min.) until even the hardiest celebrity chaser may get tired of the face-dropping. Just screening the titles takes so long that many a viewer will have finished his first box of popcorn before the action starts.

What's more, while Todd's picture had a clear, suspenseful story by Jules Verne, Pepe has only an oft-told Hollywood tale that was never worth telling in the first place. Plot: Hollywood has-been (Dailey) can't find money or nerve to make picture. Loyal stooge (Cantinflas) wins money at Las Vegas. Heroine (Jones) supplies nerve. Picture is hit. Boy gets girl. Cantinflas gets horse--a pretty white stallion, which turns in the second-best performance in the picture. Cantinflas turns in the best.

He sings, dances, waltzes a bull, tools a Jag, rolls them bones, engages in cagy combat with a self-opening door, and carries off scene after lifeless scene with a diffident charm that almost completely conceals his formidable comic art.

Only now and then does he get a laughable line ("Are you a moron?" "No, I am a Catholic."). Only one, when Bing Crosby mistakes him for a fan and casually autographs the tortilla that he is holding, does the unimpressionable Cantinflas get a line that is unforgettable. He looks amazed at the tortilla, stares indignantly at Crosby, then inquires: "Why you poot eenk on my lonch?"

The Angry Silence (Beaver Films; Valiant) at first glance looks like a remake, minus humor, of I'm All Right, Jack, and at second glance like an anti-union tirade. Actually, it is a vigorous attempt to fight the virus of conformity in modern society--an industrial miracle play in which Everyman finds salvation through a grease-smeared redeemer.

The story was suggested by the custom, common among British labor unions, of bringing a rebellious member back in line by "sending him to Coventry."* In this case, the rebel is a machinist (Richard Attenborough), an ordinary bloke who sticks to the telly and minds his football pools, until one day the Works Committee calls a wildcat strike that he considers senseless. Along with about a dozen other men, he refuses to take part in it. Factory toughs terrorize the holdouts, and all but the hero come to heel. "Don't do to step out of line these days," somebody mumbles resignedly. But persecution only gets the hero's back up, and in solitary dignity he stands on principle and refuses to join the strike.

"Blackleg!" the shop steward (Bernard Lee) rages. The factory owner (Laurence Naismith), anxious to avoid unnecessary trouble with the union, is disgusted with him, too. When the strike ends, the men vote to send the hero to Coventry. Nobody speaks to him, nobody eats with him, nobody touches work he has touched. His best friend deserts him, his wife (Pier Angeli) gets hysterical, the company pressures him to climb down and apologize. The hero holds out, he hardly knows why. "If people can't be different," he mumbles bitterly, "there's no point to any of it."

Despite its needlessly bloodthirsty climax--the machinist, like Wotan, gives up an eye to gain his triumph--The Angry Silence is a grimly impressive critique of the mass mind. Guy Green's direction is sure, direct, forceful. Bryan Forbes's script is swift, cogent, vernacular. But Hero Attenborough's performance is the best thing in the picture. He is so ordinary it hurts, but then his ordinariness is an essential part of his significance. Anybody, he seems to say, anybody at all can stand up on his hind legs and live his own life if only he has the guts, and if he doesn't have the guts he might as well lie down, because he's dead.

* Billie Burke, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Coburn, Richard Conte, Bing Crosby, Tony Curtis, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr., Jimmy Durante, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Greer Garson, Hedda Hopper, Ernie Kovacs, Peter Lawford, Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak, Dean Martin, Donna Reed, Debbie Reynolds, Edward G. Robinson, Cesar Romero, Frank Sinatra. * The citizens of Coventry, England, historically resented the soldiers quartered there and gave them the silent treatment.

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