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Despite a tendency to be overshadowed by the likes of Carol Reed, David Lean, etc, Puffin Asquith was arguably the finest all-round Director to emerge from England turning out consistent high quality product unlike Reed, for example, whose early work was risible. By the mid forties Asquith was on a roll and between 1945 and 1952 he turned out six exceptional movies, The Way To The Stars, While The Sun Shines, The Winslow Boy, The Woman In Question, The Browning Version and The Importance Of Being Earnest. The first was an Original Screenplay by Terence Rattigan, the next two were adaptations of plays by Rattigan, the fourth was an Original by John Cresswell, the fifth was another adaptation of a Rattigan play and the sixth was by Oscar Wilde. Jean Kent featured prominently in two of the six, this one, and its successor, The Browning Version, a masterpiece and one of the finest films ever produced in England. Beside Rattigan and Wilde the name John Cresswell gets lost in the shuffle and perhaps rightly so; this was his first screen credit and though he achieved a dozen or so more this was arguably his finest hour and even that was a rip-off of Rashomon. It was arguably Jean Kent's finest performance and she revelled in the chance to play Astra the Gypsy Fortune Teller who failed to foresee her own demise and who was five women in one, depending on whether it's Hermione Dabbely, Dirk Bogarde, Susan Shaw, Charles Victor or John McCallum who's describing her. Baddely and Victor provide strongest support with Bogarde so inept that one wonders how he was able to sustain a career - his American accent is so ludicrous that eventually (presumably as a bow to his limitations) he is forced to admit that he hails from Liverpool which is even more ludicrous as he sound pure Home Counties. McCallum and Shaw appear to have struck a private wager on who can deliver the hammiest performance and honours are about even. Despite all this it remains a highly watchable effort.
score 7/10
writers_reign 26 May 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2616851/ |
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26-3-2021 06:05:04