Word: donators
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...attack; in London. Hungarian-born Korda made his first films in a shed on the outskirts of Budapest after World War I, in 1931 put the British film industry on the map with his The Private Life of Henry VIII, with a cast of unknown performers (Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Merle Oberon). He married Actress Oberon, lost a fortune, then bounded back with London Film Productions, Ltd., was knighted...
...Donat, when he is supposed to get ruffled in uncomfortable situations, is very good indeed. His distinguished manner never falters as he lets his hair down and becomes a surprisingly human being. Kay Walsh, his neurotic, ambitions, but basically good wife, is somewhat less successful. The contrast she must draw with her godly husband and noble daughter is difficult to define. No Anglican vicar in all England could possibly have as lovely a daughter as Adrienne Corri. Her back-talk to the smart aleck, home-town piano teacher who has great hopes for her future, is sparkling. She obviously will...