There is some new competition for Hollywood these days, and it does not come from Europe. A New York group called Film Producers Inc. has made a documentary which for straightforward drama and acting ability equals anything the big companies have done in a long, long, time. And this picture, "The Quiet One," has been hailed by the New York Newspaper Guild as "The Best Picture of the Year."

"The Quiet One" is the story of a ten-year old boy, Donald Peters (Donald Thompson), who has grown up in an atmosphere of hate and poverty in the slums of Harlem. After several petty felonies, Donald is taken to the Wiltwyck School, where counsellors and psychiatrists try to help him by erasing the scars on his mind caused by his unhappy home life. The scenes of Donald's rejection by his mother, his unhappy life with his grandmother, and his exclusion from the society of other boys, are told in a long flashback of the boy's thoughts as he sits, lonely and bewildered, on a river bank at the school.

The scenes of the film were shot entirely at the Wiltwyck School and in the streets and dingy apartments of Harlem. The photography is superb; it not only portrays the sordidness of the slums, but also sets the mood at all times with varying patterns of light and dark. As a result, there is no need for the incessant narrative that typifies most documentaries; comments are brief and quite adequate. Dialogue is also cut to an absolute minimum, and it is a tribute to the acting and directing that so many ideas are carried across to the audience without the use of words.

Donald Thompson, playing the difficult role of a scared and frustrated youth, is competent as are few actors on the screen today. His shuffling walk, his painful stare, convey a sense of frustration and misery that lacks nothing. The supporting players, none of whom are "name" actors, bring out to the fullest the psychological implications of every scene. Clarence Cooper, a counsellor at Wiltwyck, plays himself in an especially sympathetic and understanding way.

As a psychological study, "The Quiet One" is thorough and well-connected. It uses no technical terms, but some of the manifestations of guilt complex and frustration may be rather obscure to the non-Social Relations major. The picture does not give a blueprint for the treatment of all juvenile delinquents, and it is certainly not a publicity handout for the Wiltwyck School. It attempts to show the effects of insecurity on a young boy's mind, and the extent to which care and affection can overcome those effects. As the narrator points out, "there is no happy ending" to Donald's story, but the film itself is a happy end to a very successful venture.