FOUR IN A JEEP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 23

FOUR IN A JEEP

ad nternational- Praesens Film) EMEMBERING all. that one has heAtd of the rugged cross-country qualities of the jeep, it is a puzzle why this particular vehicle should have taken so long to get here. Four in a Jeep was shown at the Cannes Festival in April, 1951--where it drew cheers from Western critics and cries of protest from the Russians-and within two months it was showing on both sides of the Atlantic. In the intervening three years someone, somewhere, must have fallen asleep at the wheel; for though this is a "foreign" film it does not suffer from the handicaps which customarily make exhibitors nervous about handling these. It has intense human interest, it has excitement and drama, it still has topicality (the scene is Vienna under the Four Power condominium), and it will continue to have a moral so long as the problem of co-existence for East and West remains with us. It is an English-language film. There are short passages of German, French and Russian, but these are there because realism demands it, and they are so well handled that. the meaning never escapes us. In fact, Four in a Jeep should draw a response from anyone who can read a newspaper or spare a thought for the debris left on the battlegrounds of Europe. The film was produced by Lazar Wechsler, the Swiss who made The Search and The Last Chance, and like these earlier productions it is infused with a deep sympathy for the plight of those displaced by war or separated from loved ones. The four in the jeep are the American, English, French and Russian members of an international patrol (played by Ralph Meeker, Michael Medwin, Dinan, and Yoseph Yadin), and it is their involvement with a young Viennese (Viveca Lindfors), who is searching for her husband-an escaped war prisoner from the East-that starts the conflict between American and Russian which gives the plot direction. I feel (perhaps perversely) that the film is not quite so flawless as some have claimed. The acting is very good, Miss Lindfors and Yadin being outstanding among the principals, and some scenes are deeply and genuinely moving. But the opening sequence is a little didactic, the ending makes a compromise with probability, and the film as a whole matches neither the profundity of, say, Vivere in Pace, nor the unflinching realism of Bicycle Thieves. The film, however, has something worthwhile to say, and I found it heartening to be reminded so forcefully that soldiers, private public, can rub along together and K ve even in time achieve something a little better than co-existence when (as the American commandant puts it) they’ve got to. les at tae