applied to Richard Llewellyn's study of a Cockney boy who turned to gangsterdom through his frustrated idealism. Clifford Odcts has done a careful directing job. and although the beginning is a bit too slow, the picture develops a certain rhythm that makes up for it. From what I remember of the book even the author did not make the passion for beauty on the part of the boy really convincing. and so Cary Grant, who gives us the best acting of his screen career, cannot be blamed for not getting the idea across either. Ethel Barrymore is the tired and ailing old mot her a mem ora ble portrait.
(Odeon.) • 0. 'C.
HANGOVER SQUARE ALL the wild stories you have gymheard about authors .who have sold a book to the films only to see little emerge of the original but the title COMES true here. Patrick Hamilton's thriller was a -brilliant .ess3y on the degenerates who don't do an atom of work, who sponge and pub-crawl and live lives of supreme ineffectualness and the year was 1938 ! Here the period is 1901 and the characters bear no resemblance to the original ones. The split-personality murderer is a composer of genius who writes a delightful concerto which has uo relation to 1903 but is bang up-to-tflh-minute in mood and idiom. He piles the body of the girl who betrayed hint on top of a Guy Fawkes bonfire and there is a glprioui blazing tire in the concert hall for the climax. The late Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell and George Sanders lead the
cast.-(Tivoli.) G. C.