CINEMA
Melba. (Odeon.)—La Belle Image. (Berkeley.)
FROM her first appearance in Brussels to the last of her many farewell concerts, name Nellie Melba was an unqualified success, so that a film concerning her must needs lack everything a film should have, that is to say dramatic conflict. True, about three long quarters through she has to decide whether she will go to America with
Oscar Hammerstein or back to an Australian farm with her husband, but this brief battle between love and a career is a minute tributary to the wide rivers of song which, to Niagaras of applause in one opera house after another, pour from the screen for two solid hours.
Patrice Munsel■ has a lovely voice, of intellectual rather than emotional appeal but pure and beautifully controlled, yet by the time she has sung a famous aria from every well-known opera, not to mention a modern song to a thwarted John McCallum whose one desire is for her to stop so that he can kiss her, and Comin' Through the Rye to Queen Victoria, and a lot of scales and some humming, one longs desperately for silence. Lewis Milestone has directed the film and considering it is merely a very tong recital, the items joined together by a deplorable script, he has not done too badly. Even so it is a tedious affair. The minor irritations are innumerable, such as casting Robert Morley as the American Mr. Hammerstein— which is really too silly and evidently Mr. Morley agrees as he makes no effort to be anything but himself—and Melba kowtowing to the English aristocracy with an "Oh Your Grace!" and a "Thank You, your ladyship!" There are also whimsicalities and coynesses enough to make the stomach do a complete somersault. Everybody in the non-musical line is ill served; Martita Hunt as the great singing teacher Madame Marchesi, Alec Chines as Mr. Carlton, owner of the Carlton Hotel and inventor of the pectic Melba, John Justin, discoverer of the heroine's talents. They have an awful time of it. Only Sybil Thorndike, regally somnolent as the aged Queen, taps reality on the shoulder. Better to close the eyes and listen to the music. Better still to buy some good gramophone records and stay at home.
La Belle Image is taken from an amusing novel by Marcel Ayme in which the hero, a stolid middle class citizen with a wife, two children and an advertising agency, finds one day that without his noticing it his face has been transformed into that of a younger, better looking. man. Directed by Paul Heymann this film trundles along in a happy pedestrian way through a maze of complexities. Franck Villard handles with adroitness the tasks laid before him, these including the seduction of his own wife and the taking of a subor- dinate position in his own firm; Pierre Larquey as a cracked old gentleman who believes he is about to strike oil in Montmartre is delightful; Frangoise Christophe is charming. Nevertheless so fantastic a tale merits more imaginative treatment and positively cries out for a Rene Clair or a Capra. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
