Plain Sailing

Mediterranean Holiday. A camel fight in Turkey, the Grand Prix auto race at Monaco, the jet pace of life aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Shangri-La--there are some snappy stretches in this Cinerama travelogue, but there are plenty of languid interludes too. The film's ports of call are those of The Flying Clipper, a barkentine of the Swedish Merchant Marine manned by 20 student cadets on a Mediterranean cruise out of Goteborg. Climbing the pyramids, throwing snowballs in Lebanon or striding through the courtyards of Hagia Sophia, the boys appear to consider shore leave a time for exercise. The shallow narration, sung and sniggered through by Burl Ives, steers a hazardous course from banality ("And now we say farewell to the land of the Sun God") to banality ("Cleopatra's golden chair asks: 'What happened to my beautiful owner?' "). What might have been an inquisitive and refreshingly youthful look into one corner of the world becomes merely a series of large, conventional, tasteless postcards.

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