"A Lion Is in the Streets"

Recent months have proved that a movie in three dimensions does not necessarily have depth; A Lion is in the Streets demonstrates that a picture in Technicolor is not necessarily colorful. In fact, in every respect bur one, this film is drab and pale. The exception is James Cagney's portrayal of Hank Martin, the ambitious backwoods peddler who almost "lynched a whole state." Against the rest of the film, Martin stands out like a Lutree potrait superimposed on a black-and-white pencil sketch.

An adaptation of the Adria Locke Langley best seller of the same name, A Lion is in the Streets is patterned on the career of the late Governor Huey Long of Louisiana. It is a much freer version that the recent Academy Award-winning All the Kings Men and a much less convincing one. While All the Kings Men depicted an era and a people as well as Willy Stark, A Lion is in the Streets portrays only Hank Martin, a character divorced form his context. For this reason it lacks much of the color of its black and white predecessor.

Perhaps director Raoul Walsh considered Martin so fascinating that he wished a minimum of attention to be focused elsewhere. Martin is undoubtedly a remarkable and enigmatic character: a man who was seemingly a sincere spreader for the "little man everywhere" and yet was capable of calculating ruthlessness; one who drew people to him by his personal dynamism and then twisted and used them for his own purposes. Cagney's leonine, forceful acting paints a convincing picture of the figure who could drag a dying man onto the witness chair to further his own political ambitions.

The crux of the picture's weakness is the sketchy portrayal of the mob on which Martin rode to power. A demagogue succeeds only insofar as he is able to play upon people's fears a frustrations. since he is merely a response to their needs, it is impossible to portray him in isolation. Martin displays an understanding of this truth in the motto--"You name it, I've got it"--which he carried over from his peddling days into his political career. The director, however, seems to have ignored it, for his depiction of the backwoods people is ridden with Hollywood's hillbilly cliches.

The supporting cast is uniformly unimpressive. There are none of the pungent, vibrant hangers-on, secretaries bodyguards and the like, who enlivened All the Kings Men. Barbara Hale is mediocre as Martin's trusting young wife who realizes too late what kind of a man she has married, and Anne Francis is photogenic, but little else, as the spicy little swamp girl who becomes Martin's mistress.