The New Pictures, Jul. 14, 1947

(2 of 2)

Repeat Performance (Eagle-Lion) is a melodrama about an actress (Joan Leslie) who kills her drunken playwright husband (Louis Hayward) on New Year's Eve. She wishes that she could live that year over, except for its climax. When she finds her husband alive and as nasty as ever, and everyone else carrying on as if it were exactly a year ago, with no foresight of calamity, she realizes that Fate has granted her wish.

Since nobody except a poet (Richard Basehart) takes at all seriously Miss Leslie's efforts to stave off the inevitable, her second chance does her little good. Some of her struggling in the emotional meshes is fairly interesting, and a certain tension does develop as the clock crawls for the second time to midnight of Dec. 31; but the picture is garnished with so much ham and ineptitude that it hardly seems worth the bother.

Joan Leslie is sincere as the unhappy girl caught in Fate's double-focus; and Mr. Hayward throws all his weight into his role as a noisome drunkard-husband. But it is hard to figure out why he isn't done in again long before the show is over.

The Trouble with Women (Paramount) is a topic that greatly interests Ray Milland, a professor of psychology, who keeps sounding off on the subject, with unflattering details. Teresa Wright, a star reporter, is assigned to work up some newspaper feature copy ridiculing the professor. She enrolls as a student, hounds him through bachelor's quarters and classrooms, and outsmarts his chilly fiancée, Rose Hobart, at the cat-&-cat game. In some bewilderment, psychologist and girl reporter fall in love. Typical side dish: a bespectacled adolescent, complete with outsized Adam's apple, who falls for Miss Wright. Best thing in the show: Iris Adrian as a stripteaser, uttering shrill little growls of self-esteem as she does—or rather, undoes—her stuff.

CURRENT & CHOICE

Perils of Pauline. Betty Hutton in a brassy, amusing biography of Pearl White, queen of the silent serials (TIME, July 7).

Ivy. Joan Fontaine as an elegant Edwardian housewife who kills to get on in the world (TIME, July 7).

They Won't Believe Me. Robert Young, Rita Johnson and Susan Hayward are respectively expert as a kept husband, his keeper, and the girl who doesn't get away with him (TIME, June 23).

The Web. A hard, neat murder melodrama, with Edmond O'Brien, Vincent Price and Ella Raines (TIME, June 23).

Possessed. Joan Crawford, Van Heflin and flashes of good movie-making do a lot for a somewhat vapid psychiatric story (TIME, June 16).

Miracle on 34th St. A clever, sure-fire comedy about a man (Edmund Gwenn) who thinks he's Santa Claus (TIME, June 9).

The Woman on the Beach. Joan Bennett, Charles Bickford and Robert Ryan cross each other up in Jean Renoir's sullen thriller (TIME, June 2).

Great Expectations. Britain's Director David Lean & colleagues do for Dickens what Laurence Olivier did for Shakespeare (TIME, May 26).

The Farmer's Daughter. Loretta Young as a country maid who runs for Congress; with Joseph Gotten and Ethel Barrymore (TIME, April 7).