Cinema: Reb Rib

Alvarez Kelly, like most pictures that prattle about cattle, leaves the customers feeling that they ought to raise a beef. But there is more than moo in this moovie. There is, for example, a galloping good story that describes with cheerful inaccuracy how in 1864 a troop of Confederate cavalry rustled about 2,500 steers from the Union forces and then sent them thundering through Grant’s lines to the relief of Richmond. What’s more, the story provides Director Edward Dmytryk with irresistible opportunities to plant a little poison ivy on the grave of Southern chivalry.

The honor of Southern womanhood is represented by a couple of highborn hussies (Janice Rule and Victoria Shaw) who offer their fair white bodies to the herdsman hero (William Holden) like so much fatback on a plate. The manners of the Southern gentleman are exemplified by a courtly colonel (Richard Widmark) who, in an episode obviously intended to titillate amateur analysts, shoots off the hero’s little finger.

After that, Holden wears one white glove, which flutters pointlessly throughout a performance that may well advance the date of his much-rumored retirement. Widmark typically does nothing to distract attention from his ineptitudes, among them a curious tendency to stumble over words of more than one syllable. He comes on, alas, with a Southern accent, and manages to sayound ez eeyuf heyuz tongue hayud tuhwurned intew a wawatermayelon. Fortunately, most of his scenes are stolen by his horse.