According to the advertisements it is “the new Elvis Presley” who is to be seen in King Creole (at the Odeon, Marble Arch). The new seems very like the old. There is the same heavy-lidded look, the same well-greased hair, at once so sleek and so artfully tousled, the same particular walk, halfway between a swagger and a stagger and, especially, the same way of putting over the same sort of songs; the essence of the enchantment still seems to be in the soft syrup of the voice, altering occasionally to a yell of anguish, and in the accompaniment of spasmodic jerks of hips and legs – like an ill-controlled marionette. The star, indeed, has not changed much, nor have his “vehicles.”

It is not, of course, at all unusual that filmgoers, and especially the many adolescents among them, should find their darling heroes among players of underworld or gangster roles. Yet there is surely something a little odd and sickly in the taste for the characteristic Presley role, as exemplified again in King Creole. It is the role of a juvenile delinquent with, admittedly, a bit of talent for singing and, we are asked to believe, with a good heart. The heart is, however, not so good as to prevent its owner from assisting both in well-organised shoplifting and in beating up an elderly man in order to grab his pay-packet. It is a role, too, heavily loaded with parental misunderstanding: it is like substandard James Dean.

Yet the fact that Presley’s sponsors are billing him, however inaccurately, as “the new Elvis Presley,” may be significant. He certainly has a distinctive style; he can evidently act a bit and he has now made several films. King Creole may mark, if not a change then at least a wish to change. It is not inconceivable that, like Crosby and Sinatra in their day, he will graduate. In the meantime he remains a symptom and a symbol of post-war adolescence, here as well as in America. But, adolescent fashions are no more permanent than other fashions. Mr Presley’s admirers will grow up. He may do so, too.