Cinema: Also Showing

Betrayed (M-G-M). The backgrounds for this film are beautiful. They were shot in Holland, in Eastman Color, by Cameraman F. A. Young, and they bathe the eye in that warm brown light the old Dutch masters loved. But when the story gets under way, it is as if a tired beetle were waddling across a canvas by Vermeer.

Autumn, 1944. Clark Gable of the British intelligence, his lips tight, stares at Lana Turner, whose dress is even tighter. Clark: “Why did you come [to England]?” Lana: “Because I wanted to get into the war.” Clark: “How much of yourself would you be willing to give?” Lana gives plenty, and not only in spy school; she has soon passed the kiss test with flying colors—in this case, black and blue. For at 53 Gable (who was recently called by one half-crushed actress “the Pudge Heffelfinger of osculation”) still has the he-manliest hug in the business.

Suddenly Lana remembers: “We mustn’t be selfish.” The war, you know, and all that. So away she flies to Holland to make—or maybe have—a liaison with Victor Mature, the well-known resistance leader. Somebody’s resistance is low, it would seem, for when Gable pops in one day, Lana is snoozing comfily in Victor’s bed. “Of course,” Clark huffs, “outside working hours you’re your own mistress.” But shortly thereafter Clark becomes convinced that Lana is betraying Victor’s intimate secrets to the Germans, and orders her arrest. It takes him an awful long time to discover his mistake.