Cinema: The New Pictures, Apr. 7, 1952

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When it falters dramatically, With a Song in My Heart manages to give itself a lift musically with such songs as Blue Moon, Tea for Two, Embraceable You, and an Americana medley of eleven tunes, rang ing from California, Here I Come to Deep in the Heart of Texas.

Encore (Rank; Paramount] brings Somerset (Trio, Quartet) Maugham back for a merited cinematic reprise with an ex pertly packaged omnibus of three enter taining short stories: i ) The ironic Ant and the Grasshopper, in which a ne'er-do-well playboy (Nigel Patrick) marries the third richest girl in the world, buys back the family estate his hard-working brother (Roland Culver) had been forced to sell, repays Culver the £1.300 he had borrowed, and at the last minute, true to form, cadges a fiver from him. Typical tongue-in-camera sequence: the elegant playboy, to shame his brother into giving him money, goes to work as a doorman at his club, a bartender at his favorite restaurant, a window washer at his office.

2) The philosophical Winter Cruise, in which a ship's captain assigns a handsome young French steward to make love to a garrulous, middle-aged spinster (Kay Walsh) in order to stop her from talking. The spinster gives everyone a lesson in humility when she lets on at the last that she was aware of the dodge all along. In Kay Walsh's eloquent performance, the vignette has both pathos and point.

3) The dramatic Gigolo and Gigolette, in which a high-diver (Glynis Johns) plans to commit suicide because she thinks her husband no longer loves her. Reassured of his affection, she safely makes the 80-ft. leap into a five-foot tank of flaming water while morbid Riviera spectators look on.

Encore has polished acting, direction and writing by three different sets of Brit. ish film talents. But the real star of the picture is that skilled old party, Somerset Maugham, who is seen in the garden of his Cote d'Azur villa as he introduces each of the stories. Author Maugham's latest screen encore serves as a reminder to epic-sated moviegoers that good things often come in small packages.