The New Pictures, May 10, 1943

Inside Fascist Spain (MARCH OF TIME) is a good job with a next-to-impossible assignment. It was photographed within the wrecked, precarious Spanish nation and subject to official Spanish censorship. But by editing, captioning and voicing, a meaningful film has been made that Spain's censors would never pass.

They might welcome the scenes of Dictator Franco's reconstruction work on both the country and the people, such as the rebuilding of the demolished University City in Madrid, and the dispensing of free food by a Falangist relief agency. But the censors would almost certainly regret the eloquent pictures of some of Spain's half-million Loyalist prisoners in a model "show place" jail. In one brief, remarkable sequence their smitten, smoldering faces are seen at close range. And the censors would violently object to the free political comments which accompany the film, from the works of two experienced Spanish correspondents, John T. Whitaker and Thomas J. Hamilton.

MOT's Jean Pages, director, and Marcel Rebière, cameraman, got permission for their Spanish work in Vichy. To get it, Pages showed his previous film on the Vatican to the Spanish Ambassador and the Papal Nuncio. After more than a year of work and struggles with Spanish red tape, the picture team emerged with some 12,000 ft. of censored celluloid.

Telling shot: a line-up of gleeful Spanish Flechas, young boy Fascists, taking a totalitarian shower bath; at a command they about-face, drop towels and proudly prance into the row of bath compartments.

Lady of Burlesque (United Artists) is what happened in Hollywood to Strip-Teaser Gypsy Rose Lee's backstage thriller The G-String Murders (TIME, Oct. 1, 1941). Despite such provocative song titles as Take It Off the E-String, Play It On the G-String, the Hays office has clearly won through. Besides, Producer Hunt Stromberg says he was convinced by a test poll that few among the widely diversified American people knew the precise meaning of the term "G-string." The whole subject, if not exactly shrouded in mystery, is handled with considerable reticence.

What remains is a lavish rather than racy study of burlesque-show atmosphere, tensed up by a double murder. A stripper is found strangled with her own G-string, and the next night a haggard performer named Princess Nirvena rolls lifeless on to the stage in a black satin gown. The detective work is done by another stripper and the company's low comedian. In these roles, Barbara Stanwyck is a glistening, assured success, and Michael O'Shea brings off a fetching Hollywood debut.

Good sequence: Stanwyck and O'Shea performing a slapstick act on the stage while a sadistic heel beats up his mistress behind the curtain.

Crash Dive (20th Century-Fox) is a Technicolored submarine story which should appeal to the boy in every man who wants to be an officer and a gentleman. The best parts of the film are its scenes of serious submarine business. Twice it screens exciting action: once when the sub slugs it out with a disguised German raider; again, when the pigboat sneaks into an enemy base harbor and blows the place to hell.