Word: donat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sylvia Short, as Queen Isabella, sometime object of a faded emotion, gave one of the show's finest performances in her wistful role--despite her phony French accent. The latter, shared by Peter Donat in his interpretation of Piers Gaveston, is more forgiveable because it is called for in Treece's stage directions. But it is as historically anachronistic as it was poorly done...
Lease of Life (Michael Balcon; I.F.E.) nearly puts its audience to sleep before shocking it awake with the chilling reminder that, in the midst of life, man is in death. Robert Donat is the grey, ineffectual vicar of a tiny parish in rural Yorkshire. His daily round is a dreary mixture of habit and frustrations. Carefully nurtured by his tweedy wife (Kay Walsh), pampered by his genteelly hoydenish daughter (Adrienne Corri), he has only one major problem: how to find enough money to pay for Adrienne's musical education in London...
While preparing one of his typically dull sermons to be delivered to the student body of a nearby public school, Donat suffers a heart attack. Concealing his illness from his family, he visits a specialist and learns that he has no more than a year to live. At this point, the direction of Charles Frend comes amazingly alive. The doomed man goes to the cathedral to pray, and in a magic moment, life seems unbearably precious to him, heady in its color and configuration and line, jeweled with sunsets and enriched by the warmth of common humanity...
Finding each passing minute inexpressibly sweet, Donat lives with-for him-a reckless bravado. Mounting the pulpit for his sermon to the students, he tears up his prepared notes and launches into a compelling hosanna to the joys of living dangerously, accepting all manner of challenges and temptations, throwing off the winding sheets of conformity. The boys love it, of course, but the church elders are shocked...
Unfortunately, this high moment is all the film has, and the picture dwindles away in a continued restating of its central idea. But Actor Donat (Goodbye, Mr. Chips), in his first movie in four years, scores a minor triumph, and his evocation of an inner glory breaking through a life-beaten man lifts an average movie into a near masterpiece...