THE CINEMA
" The Foxes of Harrow." (New Gallery and Tivoli.)—" Woman Hater." (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—" The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." (Prince of Wales.)--" Rigoletto." (Rialto.)
MOST of us at one time or another desire to be different from what we are, but it is only in the dramatic world that this whim is pandered to without argument. Actors should, of course, be supremely versatile, ranging from tragedy to comedy with consum- mate ease, but in point of fact there are only about a dozen of them in the world who are capable of convincingly submerging their egos in the parts assigned them. Mr. Rex Harrison is a fine comedian and Mr. Stewart Granger a fairly fine romantic, but, though one can sympathise with their wish to widen our view of them, the fact remains that they are not fashioned, either physically or tempera- mentally, to change places. In The Foxes of Harrow Mr. Harrison has, it is true, to take the role of a cad which, had he been permitted to treat it in a spirit of levity, he would have encompassed with insolent ease ; but here he is asked to be caddish commandingly, to be strong and masterful and bitter and brutal and, worst of all, misunderstood. Miss Maureen O'Hara must feel the exciting wickedness of him enticing her against her will into his life. She must watch him cruelly drive their crippled son to do manly deeds ; she must see him crash out into a thunderstorm beating his breast in sorrow, and flaunt his mistress in the streets of New Orleans. Now, had Mr. Granger been there brooding darkly o'er the scene and smacking his riding boots menacingly with a crop, one could have believed, but Mr. Harrison's strength, as everybody knows, lies in his weakness. Weak and witty is what he should be, with varia- tions if needs be, but always on the same theme.
* * * *
Neither does Mr. Granger embrace comedy with any facility. Woman Hater is an amusing film with some• sparkling lines which I would venture to trace to Mr. Nicholas Phipps's pen, but its hero, a peer who invites a film actress to stay in order to prove that her expressed desire to be alone is a publicity stunt, should not have been Mr. Granger. Doubtless his thousands of fans will enjoy seeing him tripping up and falling down, getting comically drunk
and half drowned, but to my mind the spirit is not there. The flesh is willing, the props are excellent, the script is crisp as corn- flakes, but Mr. Granger is not a funny man. Had Mr. Harrison been around, things would have been different. Mr. Ronald Squire makes a dear, impossible butler and Miss Mary Jerrold an enchanting dowager, but Mlle. Edwige Feuillere (to be pronounced, the adver- tisements helpfully inform us, Edweeg Fur-yer) is just a little too French. She is charming to look at, but it is almost impossible to distinguish a word she says.
* * * *
Mr. Danny Kaye is always Mr. Danny Kaye, and he, I believe, is capable de tout. I am sure that when he grows tired of comedy and turns to Hamlet the velvet and the verse will well become him. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a short story by James Thurber relating how a man, while pursuing his everyday affairs, dreams he is a knight sans peur et sans reproche. In the film these dreams are strung like precious pearls on a thin thread of background story, and though Mr. Kaye dreams them to perfection—his R.A.F. pilot is a triumph of understatement and his surgeon who mends the anaesthetising machine with a fountain pen, a poem—the general feeling is one of disappointment.
* * *
It was a bold but, as it turns out, a dreadful idea to make Rigoletto into a film. It would be presumptuous of me to do more than salute this courageous effort, for half way through I was literally blown out of the theatre by Signor Tito Gobbi whose lovely voice has been canned, it appears, in a gong. Signorina Govoni's has merely been tinned in a tin. It is possible, of course, that I am mistaken, and that owing to present conditions in Italy it was found necessary to make this film in a swimming-bath.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
