THE CINEMA
" They Flew Alone." At the Odeon.—" The Man Who Came to Dinner." At Warner's.
MR. HERBERT WILCOX has always been a courageous producer and he has never been afraid to experiment in subject-matter. This time, however, his nose for a good topical story with public appeal has led him into a veritable morass of film-making problems. He has set out to tell the story of the late Amy Johnson, to relate her pioneering in the air to the wonders of war-time aviation and to show how her attacks upon the frontiers of the pre-war woman's world have helped to make it possible for her sex to play such a major part in the prosecution of this war. To reach his martial climax of proudly parading members of the A.T.S., W.A.A.F., W.R.N.S., and so on, Mr. Wilcox has, however, to cross some very difficult country. For the story of Amy Johnson has not passed far enough back into histdry for time to have softened the rougher edges of the tale nor has the memory of her so far faded from people's minds that we are unable to check Mr. Wilcox's facts. With the historical accuracy of the events portrayed we can have little quarrel, but it is in its emotional relationship that the whole project becomes questionable and raises interesting and important issues in regard to the impersonation on the screen of living people. It is not simply that the film is kind to the living and careless of the dead. Anna Neagle's portrait of Amy Johnson is inhuman in its monotonous adulation whilst Mr. Mollison has apparently agreed to sacrifice him- self in order to provide a less virtuous foil ; for Robert Newton has been able to give almost full play to his talent for portraying sullen- ness and inebriation. The impersonations of Amy Johnson's parents are much too docile, sympathetic and sentimental to be true. Yet though the film is often dull in its protracted close-ups of the heroine battling in her cock-pit against storms and exhaustion, something very worth-while remains. It is a strangely poignant reminder of the immediate past when aircraft fought against nature instead of against man.
The Man Who Came to Dinner and Woman of the Year are both films to see. The first is an account of an Alexander Woollcon-like figure who is trapped by a broken leg in the house of a feather- brained hostess whose undistinguished Mid-Western town he is visiting during a lecture-tour. The great wit takes his revenge by turning the house into a menagerie for his eccentric paraphernalia, human and otherwise, and turns the concentrated acid of his beauti- fully turned phrases upon all phenomena of local life. Belatedly he repents his attempt to ruin the love affair of his caustic secretary (Bette Davis) and sends her rival away in a mummy-case lately arrived as a Christmas present from the King of Egypt. Bette Davis has a part in which she is wasted and Monty Woolley is a little monotonous in style. The last reels- of the film are, however, faster
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