... THE CINEMA REVIEWS By C. A. Lejeune UNDER CAPRICORN. Considering the number and nature of the talents engaged for Under Capri corn, the producers of this big Technicolor romance were certainly justified in starting their work with a high degree of confi dence. Take a look at the assets, as they appear in the credit titles: screenplay by James Bridie from the novel by Helen Simpson; direction ...

... THE THEATRE J. C. Trewin KING'S RHAPSODY Much of the action of this new Novello piece, at the Palace Theatre, passes in the kingdom of Murania. It can stand as a symbol of all musical romance; in that realm Novello, for many years, has been King Ivor. No one on our stage can contrive, more frankly, a best-selling musical play that does not pretend to be other than it is: an expert, popular- ...

... .- r --Good remake of one of Hollywood's best early psychological thrillers, Blind Alley, with excellent performances from Ree Cobb and William Holden as psychiatrist and killer. ...

... .- --An attempt at a British western, set in the South African diamond fields in the days before they were conceded to the British. With David Farrar, Honor Blackman, and a new girl of some promise, Diana Dors,] it fails to add up to more than a rough-and-tumble. ...

... .- --A not-quite-successful attempt to carry Margaret u Brien over tne awkward age between childhood and adolescence, with slightly self-conscious charm and etiolated Technicolor. J4. ...

... . By Neaio Marsh. (The Crime Club 9s. 6 d.) IT is from just such ornate and outré fal-lals as Mr. Brooke's that I expect to find an escape in crime fiction, but in this case I find myself bewildered by another kind of firework. Why, I cannot help asking, does Miss Marsh rob her story of all probability by a cast of characters so eccentric and puppet-like that no one could seriously pretend to ...

... . By John and Emery Bonnett. Michael Joseph ;8s. 6 d.) This is a reviewer's paradise-- a convincing novel about a murdered writer. ...

... by Ray Allister (Deputising for Robert Done, on holiday.) OF two October plays, one was right for television; the other was just right. I want to demonstrate the world of difference between their qualifications. It 's a honey of a play. We were talking three weeks before the play was produced. The speaker was Royston Morley, senior television drama producer, and the honey was Frank Tilsley's ...

... WE 'LL HEAR. -A PLAY. By J. C. Trewin. (Carroll and Nicholson 12s. 6 d.) MY colleague, Mr. J. C. Trewin, has an inveterate love of apt quotation-- no the thumbed phrases that are pulled by the hair out of dictionaries of Quotations and dumped down in the text, but those supremely right yet somehow unanticipated sentence which fit his text without strain. I find this gift for quotation an ...

... . by Rupert Croft-Cooke By Marguerite Steen. (Collins 12s. 6 d.) THIS novel is planned and executed in the heroic tradition. Like Miss Steen's earlier book, The Sun is My Undoing, it has a central character who sees and does, knows, feels and dares, while around him is an ever-changing panorama of scene and character. It is thus in the main stream of English fiction, in direct descent from the ...

... . By Marghanita L'aski. Cresset Press 9s. 6d.) THIS is the straightforward stor of Hilary Wainwright's journe to France in 1945 to find his sma son, who had been lost during th Occupation. It is a good idea, and Miss Las! has handled it with some skill, but it lel me thinking, not without exasperation, ho\ much better it could have been. Wainwrigh himself is stuffy and starched and only reall ...

... .-- -A very moving film indeed, about men of the Burma Army in a hospital shack in the jungle, with a startlingly accurate performance from Richard Todd, British screen newcomer. FILMS IN BRIEF ...