... By C. A. Lejeune. VIVERE IN PACE.-- The second of the new Italian films to be shown in London is of a smaller stature than Open City, but has much the same felicity of style, and the same warm humanity. Although technically a war film, it is very quiet. The scene is a drowsy mountain village which the war has almost passed by; the chief figure a genial, middle-aged farmer who wants nothing ...

... LA BELLE ET LA BETE THERE was a good deal of eyebrow-lifting in cultivated circles when it was learnt that Jean Cocteau, the poet and prophet of sur realism, had turned his complicated mind to the writing and direction of a fairy-story. Beauty and the Beast by Cocteau! cried the knowing. That cannot be! In a way, it isn't. True, the bones of the old nursery tale are there in the film ...

... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke REVIEWED ON THIS PAGE. CARRIAGES AT ELEVEN. CARRIAGES AT ELEVEN. By W. Macqueen-Pope. Hutchinson 21s.) Hutchinson 21s.) WINTER RHAPSODY. By Mary Dunstan. (Heinemann 8s. 6 d.) A STRANGE ADVENTURE IN THE LIFE OF MISS LAURA MILDMAY OF MISS LAURA MILDMAY. By J. Sheridan le Fanu. (Home and Van Thai 8s. 6d.) Home and Van Thai 8s. 6 d.) CASE FOR SERGEANT BEEF. CASE ...

... ORIGINALLY, I believe, Philip Yordan wrote his play for a white cast, about a Polish family living in Chicago. He consented to its production as a coloured play when the American Negro Theatre offered to do it in Harlem --and the rest is New York stage history. The piece, set largely in a Pennsylvanian mining town, ran on Broadway for more than 900 performances; and Hilda Simms and Frederick ...

... By John Courtenay. FINIAN'S RAINBOW (Palace) is not, after all, a strong partner for Oklahoma! and Annie. The programme calls it a different musical, and E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy must have worked like beavers on its libretto. That is the trouble: the libretto is altogether too elaborate. Besides bemg arch and winsome to a degree through the evening we must sail on a tide of blarney ...