The Cinema
" Autumn Crocus." At the Rialto Miss DOME Smrra's play had a long run, and this talkie version, directed by Basil Dean, is a capable piece of work. Mr. Dean shows us the Tyrolean scenery which the play had to assume, and the photography is often excellent. But this power of the camera to escape from the four walls of the theatre is not an unmixed advantage. If, for instance, The Cherry Orchard were filmed, should we gain anything from seeing the orchard instead of only hearing about it ? Its symbolic appeal, I think, would almost certainly suffer, for it would no longer exist wholly within the imaginative structure of the play. Instead of approaching the orchard through the minds of the characters, we should have to set against their feelings our own independent impressions.
So, in Autumn Crocus, although the open-air views are attractive in themselves, they are disturbing to the fragile atmosphere of the story. Jenny Gray, the shy schoolmistress from Manchester, falls in love with the handsome young inn- keeper; and suddenly it seems that this mountain holiday will give her the romance her starved life needs. But the inn- keeper, to his own regret, has a wife. Eventually Jenny returns to Manchester. It is a slight story, sentimentally treated, with light relief provided by sketches of various other visitors to the inn. Some of these are ably done, yielding amusing moments. But these personal situations are much less real than the surrounding landscape. Whenever the camera leaves the mountains it moves too obviously into .a region of studio conventions. However, these criticisms are perhaps too rigorous to apply to a film which succeeds very well in its main object of presenting a popular brand of sentimental romance in a picturesque setting.
Previous page
