Word: pipit
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Tawny Pipit. A sweet-tempered pastoral comedy about English bird lovers who practically forget the war in watching a pair of rare birds (TIME...
...That most are of a certain sameness which indicates a basic limitation in their conception is also increasingly evident. This disturbing alikeness, is, in fact, introversion, and together with the oft-cited virtues of English motion pictures, it can be observed clearly in the new Rank-produced film,, "Tawny Pipit...
...best British film manner, "Tawny Pipit" assumes that it is the commonplace that is worth examining. The incident of a rare species of bird nesting in a small English village offers camera and actors an appropriate chance to reproduce quiet, minutely-scaled rural life pretty much as it exists. No one is seduced or murdered on a chrome-plated village green, and what action does occur has the look and sound of reality...
...scheme of "Tawny Pipit,"--a continual harping upon the "old English virtues" of fair play and hospitality, and an incessant probing to reveal that English life is good and decent and superior--epitomizes the disturbing introversion in British cinema. Begin with "In Which We Serve," and recall "Brief Encounter," "Blithe Spirit," "The Years Between," "Stairway to Heaven," or "I Know Where I'm Going," and the same preoccupation with British life and people, British mores and traits, and above all British virtues evidences itself. Even the fine film "The Captive Heart" about prisoners of war in Germany, is really...
...picture is significant in a larger context. Very possibly, it was the Englishman's concern with such minor themes as the Pipit that enabled him to preserve his perspective during the war. This important aspect is conveyed, not in melodramatic buzz-bomb sequences, but in small-town scenes, and indicates the cogency of Rank's approach. The Pipit's sincere saga does more than just muddle through--it scores a tweedy triumph...