Cinema: The New Pictures, Sep. 22, 1958

The Naked Earth (20th Century-Fox] may come as an unpleasant shock to Richard Todd fans. Actor Todd is well-known as the movie Robin Hood, romping boyishly about Sherwood Forest, bunging arrows at the Sheriff of Nottingham and dimpling at sight of Maid Marian. Now, all of a sudden, it turns out that he is shacked up with a Marseille whore in a thatched hut in Uganda.

Todd's steamy vis-a-vis (Juliette Greco) has abandoned her profession in her home town to better herself as the hired partner of a would-be bushland farmer. The crocodiles carry him off before he can plant a single bean row, but Todd shows up, ready to offer her "anything that Harry did"; he even slips a wedding ring on her finger, by way of keeping the territorial priest happy. With the help of native labor, a rich tobacco crop springs from the land, and Actress Greco gets noticeably productive herself. But the natives go off on a binge instead of liftin' that bale, and she loses the child while a crocodile looks on gloomily. Why should a stillbirth transfix a crocodile? It must have been the bright lamplight, reasons Todd, and with this invaluable clue, he soon bags himself enough crocodile skins to keep the handbag industry going for a year.

All this is familiar jungle rot, but Scriptwriter Milton Holmes has supplied some measure of balm. He gives Hero Todd a sturdy slug of cussedness with which to wash down the. standard mixture of courage and nobility. And beneath his heroine's wayward bust beats no bromidic heart of gold; she is tough, sardonic, shrewdly mindful of her best interests, passionate only as an escape from boredom. When she finally comes to love her man, it is with an old pro's brand of affection—wary, oddly sincere, and rooted in open-eyed recognition that he is probably the least lousy way out. French Cafe Singer Juliette Greco, in her first major American showing, swaggers, spits, snarls and snuggles her way through the role with a quick-bodied versatility that brings the character, and frequently the movie, tartly alive.

Wind Across the Everglades (Schulberg; Warner) is for the birds. Pretty birds they are, too—snowy egrets, white heron, roseate spoonbills—whether cawing squeakily in their fledgling nests or soaring through a dusky Florida sky. But Author-Co-Producer Budd (On the Waterfront) Schulberg should have heeded the advice usually given to acrophobes rather than bird watchers—never look down. Schulberg does look down, and he and his movie take a terrible tumble.

Canada's Christopher Plummer, a talented actor (Broadway's The Lark, TV's Little Moon of Alban), arrives in turn-of-the-century Miami, where he harkens to tales about Cottonmouth (Burl Ives), a red-bearded snake charmer off in the Everglades whose band of swamp angels (including such old Thespians as ex-Pug Tony Galento, Clown Emmett Kelly, Jockey Sammy Renick) pick off the wildlife like hungry dogs in a horsemeat factory. Modern hunters would do well to study their technique: every bird they shoot falls within 2 ft. of their boats.