THE UNAFRAID

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 528, 5 August 1949, Page 20

THE UNAFRAID

(Universal-International) F The Unafraid ends with something suspiciously like a whimper, at least it begins with a bang. Within the first five mirl@tes Burt Lancaster has killed a man in a taproom brawl and is racing through the back alleys of London’s East, End with the Law at his heels. For the onlooker it is a good chase, True, these somewhat stylised alleys, greasy tenement areas and junkyards are, one feels, just studio slums and not the allegorical labyrinth of Odd Man Out, but the feeling has hardly time to become articulate before it is lost in the excitement of the moment. I suppose there is something -atavistic in all of us, which. reacts instantly to the sight of a human being on the run, and when there is strong objective camera-work playing on the optic nerve- there is less chance of sympathy for the hunted breaking through. In this first sequence the photography is good enough to ‘t what might have been a routine ¢ops-and-robbers piece into more than passable drama; and the speed of the chase, the gaspimg heart-in-the-mouth panic of the fugitive was enough to bring the Id right out of its shell. And, in the main, that is the criticism which I would make of the film as a whole. The climaxes, by accident or design, are all moments of violence and, with one exception, are more likely to arouse emotional excitement at the instinctive level than promote those intellectual satisfactions which are the mark of a really good picture. It is interesting to compare The Unafraid with Mine Own Executioner, of rather to contrast the two approaches to the same problem, for the principal figure in each story is a former prisoner-of-war suffering from dangerous neuroses. In Mine Own Executioner Anthony Kimmins followed what might be regarded as the orthodox course and employed the subjective approach. A good deal of the English film was used to ‘underline the mental state of the | central character, either by completely subjective photography or by concentrating attention on small details of be-

haviour-such as the aimless «kicking of stones, and the sudden fits of limp-ing-which were recognisably the outward signs of inner disturbance. Norman Foster, who directed The Unatraid, has relied entirely on objective photography and action, and since Burt Lancaster is by no means as good an actor as Kieron Moore there is really nothing to prepare us for the sudden violent outbreaks which are in theory the fruit of two years in a Nazi con-centration-camp. Joan Fontaine, as the nurse ‘eclio sheltered the fugitive, fell in love with him, and at the ast became herself involved in homicide, did well to make her feelings plausible. In the end it is she who persuades Lancaster that they must give themselves up to the police. This is not likely to prove as risky for him as you might think, for ‘the script-writer arranged that Lancaster

should be instrumental in saving the life of a sick child, and when you take that and his neuroses into consideration he’s hardly likely to get more than probation. It is a slick and unsatisfactory way out of a difficult situation, and the film could perhaps be summarised as equally slick and unsatisfactory. But there is one earlier scene at least that I will remember. It shows Lancaster, in prison, being prepared for a judicial flogging, and I would commend it to the attention of those who so frequently advocate the reintroduction of corporal punishment without appreciating just what the cat o’ nine tails means,