Page 3, 26th May 1950

26th May 1950

Page 3

Page 3, 26th May 1950 — Disney Surprise
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Disney Surprise

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
(LONDON PAVILION)
WHAT is surprising about. this double Walt Disney ? It is that the British half is better than the American. Mr. Disney has never been known to rest on his laurels and is constantly ploughing back the money he makes from one film into his next. Now he has tackled one of the most English and most cherished of children's books-Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows and has brought off a winner.
Surprising, too, is the allocation of an " A " certificate and not a
U." That must be because the American story (from Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow) has those Disncycsque sequences in which things go scrunch in the night.
Certainly, there is not a moment in Mr. Toad's saga to trouble the most vulnerable child brain.
Among the Mr. Toad creations-and they are all not only cleverly interpreted but infinitely likeable I plump for Mr. Rat. We have seen nothing so good since Danny Kaye's R.A.F. type in Walter Mitty.
We have all met this toothy, correct, diffident, conscientious person in our time who would never cheat the law but who can always be found in the vanguard in defence of a friend.
Basil Rathbone narrates the story and Eric Blore speaks for Toad. We are not told who speaks for Rat -but it is magnificent.
Badger becomes a Scot with an accent to match and that is the only phoney bit in the half hour's run-at least it is a brand of Scats' I haven't met and I know most.
If Disney has any excursion into the horrific here it is in the drawing of Counsel for the Prosecution with his grotesque over-developed jaw (a logical exaggeration, it is true). But Mr. Toad in the box is undaunted by him. Cyril, the north country horse, is a most happy creation and his accent is a hundred per cent. right.
This is a half hour of pure joy.
.Washington Irving's story of the itinerant schoolmaster is a far more ambitious affair, with elaborate sequences (some brilliant) and a group of human characters who have little appeal. One character, at least, recalls the cruder type of newspaper
cartoon. The " heroine," Katrina, is a fascinating baggage, recalling Snow White, Why not divide these two filmsand let the children see Toad unaccompanied 7 The Capture (LONDON PAVILION) Director : John Sturges
LEW Ayres, who is associated in my mind wit?) some kind of moral uplift movement, may have chosen this film because of its theme.
It is a conscience theme a man who in pursuit of a suspected thief in the Mexican hills, shoots him when he already has his hands upan ethical crime for which he tries to make amends.
The idea is all right but it is worked out in such a tortuous fashion that it becomes wearisome.
Far from setting himself right with his conscience the "hero" kills another man in a brawl and is only prevented from committing suicide by a Mexican priest. There is an excellent idea here gone awry, Father Is a Bachelor (Ormort,
MARBLE ARCH)
Director: Norman Foster and Abby Berlin AFTER the brood of twelve in Cheaper by the Dozen, we come down to a mere five herefour boys and a little girl who is just too much of a good thing. The brothers are an ordinary, inoffensive and normal bunch..
What I liked about the film. however, is its out of door character which it never forsakes. The . children, whose parents have been drowned in a river steamer disaster. are befriended by a wafftlering show man (singer) who finds himself unanimously adopted as provider of boots and singer-to aleep. Colecn Gray as a welfare officer (voluntary) brings her fresh charm along to distract him from this exacting career-Yes. Let's keep our mind on the fresh air angle and we may forget what an unlikely story it all is.
In a Lonely Place (OrsoN, MARBLE
ARCH) Director: Nicholas Ray
'HUMPHREY Bogart, now producing his own films-Knock on any Door was the first is enterprising enough to star himself in an unsympathetic role.
He is a script writer who is given best-selling novels to turn into films. A horrible job and that may account fer his peculiar habit of hitting Dui at anyone who annoys him and breaking the nose of one of his lady friends.
(This last happily is in retrospect.) The advance publicity on this film claims that it shows us Hollywood as it really is-and at least this is partly true. It explains in a way those brawls that we occasionally read about when studio personnel's nerves get the better of them and they let off steam by physical violence.
With a reputation like that, the scriptwriter comes strongly under suspicion when a hatcheck girl, last seen leaving his apartment, is found murdered. Outwardly calm, this has a disastrous effect on his nervous system. He nearly murders a motorist by the roadside and all but strangles the girl he loves (a cool, perfectly poised study by Gloria Grahame).
Like a famous duchess whom Henry VIII wanted to marry, she decides that as she has only one throat, she had better call the wedding off.
The story is neatly and deftly told with that touch of Bogart austerity that makes him the interesting screen personality he is.




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