Unlike Hollywood's recent flasco in a production of "The Hiry Ape," an old English movie version of "The Emperor Jones" retains the essential theme of Eugene O'Neill's tragedy, and by abridging it is able to include a wider period Brutus Jones's life leading up to his fight through the jungle.

Where the original play opens in the Caribbean monarch's castle, the cinema version goes back to fill in what O'Neill left to the imagination. Covering his days as a pullman porter, his murder of a vindictive rival, his escape from a chain gang, and usurping of power on a tropical isle. "Emperor Jones" is almost over before O'Neill's story begins.

Probably the chief fault of the first part is that it fails to grasp the tremendous depths of evil in Brutus Jones. While O'Neill draws him as a devil incarnate, who stops at nothing to achieve his end, the English version, played by Paul Robeson, is of an aggressive man, who committed his sins unavoidably.

Following faithfully the author's idea, the film portrays the decline and fall of the Jones empire in a shortened version which rounds out the production into a movie, which if less intense than the original, fits its medium well.

In a fanciful version of Beethoven's life Harry Bauer presents a tragic, if unrealistic, picture of the great composer, Slurring over the musical aspect, it emphasizes a triangle in Beethoven's life so strongly that it is hard to recognize the line drawn between fact and the French love for love.

Even on an ancient sound track, Beethoven's music is magnificent, but it is poorly used. Concentrating on the symphonies, the French producers use parts of the fifth as a constant theme, and forget completely the masterful concertos, chamber, and vocal works, as well as other of the symphonies.

With a tremendous subject to work on, "The Life and Loves of Beethoven" could be a great deal better. Although it achieves full realization of the horror of a great composer going deaf, its over-done dramatics of a death scream, and conflicts d'amour cause what could be a film classic to fall for short of its objective. eon