CONTEMPORARY ARTS
CINEMA
OCR great-grandchildren, I suppose, will look back on the days when men were sent underground to hack out coal with much the same scandalised amazement as we view the days when boys were driven up chimneys. In the meantime, however, it seems we can do nothing but pour streams of gratitude on miners, the dangers and discomforts of whose work is made so clear in The Brave Don't Cry. Mr. John Grierson gives us the full story of a mining disaster in Scotland, a hundred or so men trapped below ground, the desperate attempts to reach them, the womenfolk waiting at the pithead. Waiting, of course, is the keynote of such tragedies as these, first for rescuers, then for gas, lastly for death ; and it is unfortunate, such is the frailty of human nature, that waiting, if sufficiently protracted, becomes tedious.
The Scotch are not a communicative people, and Mr. Grierson has determined to be as lifelike and sincere as possible, so that his miners, all with the same black face and the same mode of expression, do not emerge as personalities; Only Mr. John Rae and Mr. Fulton Mackay develop definite characters. In this subdued, almost documentary, picture there are no dramatics, no sentimentality, nothing to tear the heartstrings or to bring them tangled into one's mouth ; simply an honest study of a courageous Scottish com- munity behaving as I am sure it would in such a crisis, with a triumphant understatement not, I fear, wholly suited to the cinema.
Mr. Stewart Granger,as the swashbuckling French nobleman, who turns politician, _duellist and actor to avenge a murdered friend, makes, as you can imagine, a perfect Scaramouche. In this coloured film of flamboyant and lavish proportions he is the dashing, fiery, passionate and manly centrepiece, a trifle coy at times, which is painful, but on the whole doing us tremendous credit. He is kept very busy. When not practising his duelling, escaping from the police or giving poorish vaudeville performances, he is ardently kissing Miss Eleanor Parker and trying not to kiss Miss Janet Leigh, a lady he mistakenly believes to be his sister. Large hunks of this picture, which is directed by Mr. George Sidney, are ridiculous, but ridiculous in a big glittering way, and the final duelling scene between Mr. Granger and a periwigged Mr. Mel Ferrer is truly splendid. This takes place at the Opera, and every part of the auditorium„ save perhaps the gallery and the cloakroom, is catered for ; through the stalls, into the boxes, round thellrim of the dress-circle, across the foyer, on to the stage the contestants thrust and parry, a whirl of blade and jabot ; and I feel it would do Mr. Rafael Sabatini's heart good to see them. In this film devoted so zealously to action I should like to give a word of praise to Miss Nina Foch who, though considerably more beautiful than was ever that sad and foolish Marie Antoinette, makes of her, for once, a plausible figure.
* * *
In Dreamboat we have Mr. Clifton Webb as a college schoolmaster endeavouring to live down, or to be more exact anaesthetise, his past as a film actor. The silent films he made in his youth, and in which he nigh suffocated Miss Ginger Rogers with passionate kisses, have been hauled out of cold storage by a sponsor of scents for his television programme. As these are considered deleterious to Mr. Webb's dignity as an educationalist, he is told either to resign or to stop the films being shown. Directed by Mr. Claude Binyon, who has also written the remarkably witty script, this is a highly entertaining picture. Miss Rogers, it is true, is not at her best as the ambitious middle-aged star ; on the other hand Mr. Webb is better than he has been since his Sitting Pretty days. He is acidulated, but not too offensively so. The parody of old films is, of course, a push- over for comedy, and the ones shown here are little short of heavenly. The savage digs at the supposedly high standards of television programmes are also a joy ; and to cap all with a whisk of cream there is Miss Elsa Lanchester filling to bursting point the part of an amorous spinster.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
