But daily life goes on, as in the world outside,
and in a strange way the criminals remain people first and criminals second, in spite of the criminal
Vintage
By PETER
THERE is really a remark- able amount of quality in TV drama, but it needs a play like Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates (Granada) to remind us what top quality is, like a bottle of vintage claret after a long time with no drink but beer. Since it was written in 1935 there have been so many plays trying to copy the pattern (classic legend offering modern parallel) that one gasps at the reminder of the original's total superiority.
Technically it is an amazing feat: to throw away your highest card at the very beginning, with Andromache's happy outburst, 'There will be no Trojan War!' And then, having allowed that subsequent proceedings must arrive at the foregone conclusion, because of course there will be a Trojan War, Giraudoux none the less manages to work up a tremendous sus- pense.
The action turns mainly on Hector, the war- rior returning who does not wish to go to war again, and so wants to give back the recently- abducted Helen to the Greeks. Hector requires an actor able to be 4 once heroic and anti- heroic—Jouvet must have been marvellously right in the first production, and Sir Michael Redgrave caught exactly this note on our stage. Keith Michell the other night looked striking enough, but the sardonic touch was missed. That wonderful line, for instance, when he inquires of Paris whether he eloped with Helen 'in the usual manner of such seducers, on horseback, leaving a pile of manure beneath her window?' quite lost its sharp and bitter point.
Television
framework of their lives. Those we see in the film, all being either Irish or vaguely Mediter- ranean, are Catholics, and religion keeps crop- ping up, in a casual and lifelike way. After a fight the defeated tough unhooks a crucifix from the wall to pack up and go; mass is a recognised occasion for meetings and plots, yet you don't get a feeling of cynicism; rather of it still being a part of the men's lives, as happens in outside life among less exotic sinners. Stanley Baker is Banion, a thick-necked, terrible character but an undeveloped one; Patrick Magee is superb as the warder wholly involved in prison morality, undistinguishable from his men but a lot more hateful; and Gregoire Asian, of the unforgettable face and chameleon performance, is the liberal governor who can't get remotely near the sort of violence he meets, doesn't see it and perhaps doesn't dare to admit it. Plenty of things in this explosive but beautifully controlled film may affect filmgoers the same way: it's so much more than a routine piece of Stanley Baker toughery, but may be regarded (with a shudder at its sub- ject) as just that; which would be a great pity
Classic
FORSTER But probably this is part of the larger issue of Giraudoux's style, that unique blending of the comic and cruel, the lapidary and poetic, the style which in France has always been recognised as his principal glory. It does not translate easily, even with Christopher Fry to do the job, and he has succeeded here only with big stars like the Lunts or Redgrave to draw crowds. Also in France he had the inestimable advantage of writing for and working with the great Jouvet company. Granada's production on Tuesday Was reasonably effective and well photographed, de- spite a set which made Troy seem to be a 11 If- finished office block, with actors forced to walk along girders like bricklayers, and a Ulysses, in that admirable and neglected young actor Charles Gray, who was too young, too much a sharp' tough graduate from Staff College, too little the wily Greek : again, imagine Pierre Renoir in the original.
in the heavens. . . He wrote this twenty-four hours after spending a weekend with Elinor Glyn at Montacute.
BOOKS
Magnifico
By ROY JENKINS
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