THE CINEMA
The Lamp Still Burns." At the Leicester Square Theatre:— " Holy Matritnony." At the Tivoli.—" The Volunteer." At the Odeon.
THE production of The Lamp Still Burns was begun by Leslie oward before his death. It is difficult to measure the extent of is responsibility for its final form. The film shows many signs f contradictory aims, and presumably it lacks the unification of erne which he might have achieved had he remained alive to omplete a job clearly begun with the highest intentions. The rst half of the film contains an admirable exposition of the train- g and group life of the nurses of a large London voluntary ospital. The dining halls, fluttering with white uniforms, the ter-staff etiquette of ward and corridor, the ritual of medical lasses, all these elements portrayed with a wealth of authentic etail combine into an absorbing picture of an unknown world ying behind gloomy hospital walls. We enjoy all the excitements if a private peep behind the scenes of a superficially familiar nstitution. Then the probationer nurse of the story becomes namoured of a wealthy patient, and the issue is reduced to the amiliar screen dilemma of love or work. From time to time less ersonal interjections remind us of the need for reform in the onditions under which nurses live and demand a relaxation of the 'i'ciplines which they suffer. There even appears to be a delicate int that these problems are unlikely to be solved under the oluntary hospital system! One suspects, however, that such eforming influences as may have been at work in this production a ve been persuaded to pull their punches to the point of turning ost of them into pats on the back. Miss Rosamund John gives 1, excellent performance in this film.
Holy Matrimony is a most unusual piece of work. Lacking THEATRE glamour and the normal scintillations of love on the screen, it portrays middle-aged domestic bliss with sensitivity and wit. In this film version of Arnold Bennett's Buried Alive, Mr. Monty Woolley and Miss Gracie Fields demonstrate that neither the Jove-like beard of the one nor the Lancashire eccentricity of the other is a sole histrionic stock-in-trade. Each of these stars is clearly a comedy artist of wide range and high quality. The film (though from Hollywood) presents us with the most authentic picture we have yet enjoyed of Edwardian England. A Putney general shop, a Chelsea frame-maker and the trees and squares north of the river are depicted with such care and evoke such nostalgia that one is tempted immediately to hurry out and compare the present fact with the Hollywood conception of the past. This film has an excellent script, beautifully turned dialogue and is acted with zest and appreciation by a most talented cast.
The Volunteer, made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to publicise the Fleet Air Arm for the Ministry of Information, is often exasperatingly like a fifteen-minute M.o.I. film unnecessarily inflated to three times its natural length. Yet to balance its dragging pace and its over-obvious ingenuities it contains the best scenes ever made on board an aircraft-carrier (the ' Indomitable '), and manages, in its story of the heroic career of an apparently unsuitable recruit, to convey much of the warmth and good humour of life aboard ship. The credit for turning what might have been dragging boredom into frequently pleasant leisureliness must go to Tommy Woodrooffe and to Ralph Richardson, whose voice and • presence are the mainstay of the film. EDGAR ANSTEY.
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