CINEMA
September Affair. (Plaza. )—The Magnet. (Odeon.)
LOVE and selfishness, we know, go hand in glove, but it is straining our powers of credulity too much to ask us to believe that twe responsible- looking grown-up people like Mr. Joseph Cotten and Miss Joan Fontaine would, however besotted with love, refrain* from informing their rela- tives that they were not, after all, killed in a plane crash. These starry-eyed lovers, one taking a holiday from his wife and son to " think things over " and one a famous concert pianist, meet in Italy, and they are so busy toasting each 'other in chianti they miss their plane to America. When they learn it has crashed and all lives have been lost, they only hesitate a second before setting up house together in a villa the size of Versailles, relegating wives, sons and concerts to eternal oblivion. Anybody over the age of fourteen could have told them that a love affair in such execrable taste would not endure, and indeed Mlle. Frangoise Rosay, lamentably wasted in a role the size of a pinhead, does so. When the suffering pseudo-widow, played by Miss Jessica Tandy, arrives on the scene, she behaves so splendidly that another heavy weight is added to the improbabilities. The Italian scenery is, naturally, delightful, and the music, by Rachmaninoff, equally so, but everything else, including Mr. William Dieterle's direction, is most disappointing.
The incomparable Mr. T. E. B. Clarke, author of Hue and Cry and Passport to Pimlico has written another delightful script for The Magnet, a film which adds a fresh sprig of laurels to Ealing Studios' evergreen crown. Directed by Mr. Charles Frend and starring Mr. Stephen Murray, Miss Kay Walsh and Master William Fox, the film concerns the seaside adventures of a schoolboy. These are recounted to us, both visually and orally, with most agreeable modesty, no shred of exagger- ated dialogue or sentimental behaviour appearing for an instant to mar our enjoyment. Master Fox looks and acts exactly like a boy of ten, exuberant, quite good-mannered, and, in matters concerning his emotions, as secretive as a dozen oysters. Mr. Murray, as the psy- chiatrist who fails altogether to analyse his son's troubles, comes in for some of Mr. Cla/ke's slyest digs yet remains a charming father, and Miss Walsh, whether noting down her son's behaviour on a piece of paper for her husband's benefit—and Master Fox's behaviour is deliciously inconsequential—or simply being an ordinary mother, is equally charming. Sir Michael Balcon can be complimented on producing yet another gay, exciting and wittily observant winner.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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