... TO most people the name of Lourdes conveys something to do with miracu lous cures. A few may be able to go further and debate the miracles. Franz Werfel, a refugee from Germany, had managed to reach Lourdes in 1941 when new moves by Vichy and the Nazis seemed to seal his fate. Re vowed that if ever he reached America he would tell the world about Lourdes, and now he has magnificently fulfilled ...

... Reviewed by Noel Thompson THE dramatic and overshadowing events of the war have swamped the memories of the Spanish Civil War with all its tragedy and its rehearsals for the present conflict. Ann Bridge provides a skilful reminder in Frontier Passage (Chatto and Windus. 9s.). Interwoven with the love story of a journalist and a Spanish countess of opposing political sympathies are vivid ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Adult and Juvenile By James Agate OUT of the blue or the cellars of Studio One, which amounts to very much the same thing, comes Derrière la Facade, a small French film so good that it takes all Hollywood's monster productions between finger and thumb and puts them into a sack, which it then deposits in the Atlantic half-way between Hollywood and the port of entry into ...

... By Horace Horsnell Arsenic and Old Lace (Strand) THOUGH poised to begin with somewhat perilously between the comic and the macabre, this ruthless comedy comes down so deftly on the side of the wicked burlesque that laughter, which might have been self-conscious or constrained, becomes both spontaneous and full-throated. Its theme is homicidal mania; its two most charming characters are active ...

... by Playbill THE theatre has probably never meant so much, both in London and the 'provinces, as it does to-day. That is not to say that every theatrical produc- tion is full of meaning; many of them, in- cluding some of the most popular, mean precious little. But there is a probably unprecedented boom, and the living drama, from Shakespeare to pantomime, is being supported (most London ...

... GRAVITY, GAIETY and GHOSTS The Tragedy of Malaya Mr. Price Among the Mediums A Children's Book for Grown'Ups A Discursive Dachshund -By Vernon Fane THE Malayan campaign, and the loss of Singapore, re mains one of the greatest tragedies of the last three years of war; possibly the greatest defeat that British arms have suffered during that time. Mr. Ian Morrisons MALAYAN POSTSCRIPT (Faber. Ss. ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE The most important novelty is The Petrified Forest, at the Globe Theatre, which comes from America, where it had a long run. Mr. Robert Emmett Sherwood has never written a bad play yet, and this is almost (but, to my mind, not quite) his best. It deals with gangsters yet they are only incidental (though they shoot the hero dead), and it is not gangster drama, but a ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE most im pressive films I have seen in the past fortnight are both about war in the desert. One is British, the other Russian. Both, oddly enough, have numerical titles, The British film is NINE MEN (New Gallery). The Russian film is THE THIRTEEN (Tatler). Nine Men is directed by Harry Watt, the man who made Target for To-night and London Can Take It. Watt is one of ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE categories into which novelists can be divided are manifold, and if they are seldom very water tight or precise, at any rate they clear the ground and make a basis for discussion. The oldest, the best-known and, on the whole, the most useful of these categories, the romantic and the realistic, for many years divided fiction into two camps. Romance and realism are ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. DESTINATION CHUNG KING is the auto biography of a Chinese lady, born in Honan and bred in Peking, who, in 1937, when barely twenty, came to London to study obstetrics. Her natural bent was for literature, but Science was our god, a beneficent god to make of China a rich and happy nation. At that time she was a pacifist, and had many bitter arguments with her childhood ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT is so pleasant to watch those ex cellent artists. Gaby Morlay, Michel Simon, Eric von Stroheim and the rest at work again, that few people will grumble if the new French film at Studio One, DERRIÈRE LA FAÇADE, is not arranged quite as impeccably as their talents merit. Derriere la Facade was in pro duction when the war broke out. It was actually showing in Paris when ...

... By Horace Horsnell Cinderella (Stoll) PANTOMIME, like beer, is a wonderful leveller. It removes inhibitions from both sides of the footlights, and absolves actors and audience alike from taking themselves too seriously. It has rhyme, but little reason, and is no respecter of persons. Kings are of less account than commoners; licence is the order of the state. The fabric of the story it tells ...