Cinema: The New Pictures, Jun. 24, 1957

Island in the Sun (Darryl F. Zanuck; 20th Century-Fox), an unraveling of Alec Waugh's 1955 bestseller, is Moviemaker Zanuck's first lone-wolf production since he left Fox. This turbid plot-boiler clearly rates a special award as the sexiest West Indian travelogue ever made. The mating season is always in full swing on the throbbing Caribbean isle of Santa Marta, which doubtless boasts the highest imaginary birth rate of any 50-mile-long island under the sun. Island employs even the unsubtle cinema device of the screen-bottom exit, pointed up with gasps and romantic rustlings after its clinching couples drop from view.

The disjointed welter of plots occasionally departs from animal husbandry to dwell upon balmy Santa Marta's social and racial ferments. It seems that the happy islanders, almost all of some Negro ancestry, sometimes get irritated by the snootiness of the British colonial plantation owners. Their self-seeking messiah (played like a talking totem pole by Singer Harry Belafonte) is trying to improve their lot by shaking hands with all of them, sullenly muttering into his champagne at white folks' garden parties, making louder speeches over coconut milk about his dedication to equality and self-government. Belafonte's biggest job, however, is evading the clutches of a white cargo named Mavis (Joan Fontaine), obviously too old for him.

Toying with its theme of race relations under the palms, Island abounds in mixed-blood romances without showing any interracial kisses. A dusky lovely (seductively portrayed by Dorothy Dandridge) easily captures the governor's panting aide-de-camp. Another temptress (Joan Collins), led for a while to believe she has Negro blood, drags the governor's son into sudden paternity. Her half brother (James Mason), who really does have Negro blood, imagines that he is also a cuckold, and so murders his supposed rival in a fit of pique. The movie's single solid acting job is by John Williams as a shrewd constabulary chief. The movie gets no distance at all in solving Santa Marta's color problem, but the color photography is beautiful.

Sweet Smell of Success (Hecht, Hill and Lancaster; United Artists) is a high-tension jolt into the rat-eat-rat, rat-tat-tattle world of a monstrous Broadway columnist (Burt Lancaster) and his favorite hatchetman (Tony Curtis), a pressagent who has swapped his soul for a mess of items. No self-respecting vulture would be caught in the company of these carrion slingers. Says Curtis the flack of Lancaster the gossipist: "You got him for a friend; you don't need an enemy!" Says Burt to Tony: "I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic."