Beauties of the Night

It is the rare motion picture magnate who can resist burdening screens with a sequel to any smash hit. Happily, the public has been spared an acquaintance with the Son of Fan Fan the Tulip. Instead, Rene Clair has taken the materials that made Fan Fan so entertaining--a fanciful script, Gerard Phillipe and Gina Lollabrigia--and gone on to new triumphs.

Beauties of the Night is a Gallic treatment of Mr. Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Gerard's hero is a bit more purposive and coherent in his dreams, and the world into which he constantly reawakens is a bit more vicious, but the idea is the same. Phillipe plays a music teacher whose drams take him back into history. The dreams center about his success as a composer of operas, a soldier of fortune, and a wooer of beautiful women. One of these women is Gina Lollabrigia.

The only possible criticism of this droll and well conceived show is that Miss Lollabrigia is too little in view. Sharing Philippe's dreams with two other women (this makes the picture a fantasy) she has a smaller part than in Fan Fan or Beat The Devil. Fortunately, the tiny amount of time she is on the screen is matched by the costume she wears. As a luscious houri, Miss Lollabirgia is well outfitted for balmy desert breezes, and is also quite logically clad for a scene in a bath.