Movies

Sympathy Wins Where Sin Fails in Script

By W. Ward Marsh

If I were writing a novel or a screen script-which I distinctly am not (would it be better to write "cannot?") -I most certainly would see to it that at least half my characters were completely sympathetic.

There is a certain refuge in that.

Even if there are some major faults in your book or script, your reader, or viewer, still has a few "people" who demand that he finish the book or sit interestedly through the film.

Let me cite you three examples.

Last week there opened "The Purple Plain" in Loew's State and "Mambo" in Loew's Stillman-and I finished reading William Murray's latest novel, "The Fugitive Romans," which Vanguard brought out late last month at $3.50.)

The script of "The Purple Plain" was far from flawless. The one for "Mambo" was obviously one of the worst. Some of the photogW. WARD MARSH raphy in "The Purple Plain" was a atrociously bad, but "Mambo" held well to low-key lighting to match what it was trying g to do.

But "The Purple Plain" was concerned with as sympathetic a group of people as you could reasonably expect to "meet" on the screen while "Mambo's" dramatis personae. were almost but not quite as decadent as all the carnal crowd in "The Fugitive Romans."

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Robert Ryan and Barbara Stanwyck

In "Escape to Burma's center of action are Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan and David Farrar, popular British star at the R. K. O. Palace Theater. Ryan, a jewel thief charged with murder, seeks refuge on the Stanwyck teakwood plantation near a Burmese jungle. officer,

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vidual conclusions in "The Fugitive Romans" but their presentations are most interesting for the adult reader.

Another virtue, Murray has not written his novel with either or both eyes on Hollywood or on Hollywood-on-theTiber. He has done it well from the writing standpoint, but he might have been even better if he had given a little more honor to his hero who could still have fumbled his way through the same dying world to a happier conclusion for a novel.

Farrar, British security tracks him down as fol-· Still, the new novel is comRomans lowers of the murdered rajah arrive seeking revenge. The climax takes place in the steaming jungle where% the couple narrowly escape death.

pelling because it is so well

written aside from the kind of frankness, which empurples too much modern writing that it is almost a success.

The point is those in bo" were so repellent that the picture was without values which the same script virtues found in Murray's novel would have in a measure redeemed the Stillman's film from total loss.

Romans" from the trash heap and places, it well up in the group of modern novels.

"The Fugitive Romans" The once favored left bank in yesterday's novels has given way to the now popular Hollywood-on-the-Tiber, the nucleus of which is the American film colony in Rome.

It is in this instance working at Cinecitta on “Ave Caesar." It not only has constructed a

"The Purple Plain" was connew

stantly close to the spectator's and which is cleaner

heart and always into his symthe original but which furnishes pathies because its characters Murray a whipping boy which were, without a single excephe flagellates to a howling pulp. tion, appealing. Maybe his novel would have Only Murray's very good been better had he concerned writing keeps "The Fugitive himself solely with "Ave Caesar"

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because he is at his best with version. Some hurt with vicious satire. words, others with deeds, apd the only reason any of them are at all attractive is because of Murray's presentation.

He has, however, written about an assortment of people all mauve and decadent, which of course means that not one has the sympathy one gives even

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to the most unsympathetic in who submits to

"The Purple Plain."

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The list of singular people also include a broken-down actor to shame and humiliation during a part of the There is his hero who has filming of "Ave Caesar" because fled from responsibilities if not he once humiliated the producer from high-pressure life in Madof it. ison Avenue to Rome where he makes his easy living as the to sympathy than does the hero. American"contact" between The hero, who eventually shunts Italian films and their New off the embraces of the British wife because he fears any resympathy, but the actor, at the sponsibility, is too weak to merit

York offices.

in New York and is early in the He has already had one affair

novel about to become the vic tim of an oversexed female from England who, unfortunately, is married to a potential homosexual.

This is not a surprise for the novel is concerned too much with them and with others who practice various patterns of per-

This actor comes even closer

dramatic climax of his career, boldly boots the producer across the "Coliseum" and strides away only to fall into deeper degradation and eventually to die of his excesses.

Neither Ave Caesar" nor many of the characters are carried through to their indi-