Word: pipit
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Arthur Rank and his band of studio radicals have long held that a noteworthy movie needs only a good story, not a raft of magenta sunsets, daring cleavages or rabid mobs. This conservatism, marking the difference between British efforts and their Hollywood counterparts, is displayed in "Tawny Pipit," and proves once again that the designation "rank" lauds as well as castigates. This story of a rare bird and its effects on the nearby town is consistently first-rate...
...fluff, an extremely light touch was needed lest the downy plot be brushed away. The touch provided fills the bill, for the writers stress the humor, underscore the sentiment, yet never lose the bird in the shuffle. By keeping their dramatic proportions constant, they maintain the credibility of the Pipit throughout--in fact, so important does he become that he assumes a par with the RAF: winged creatures all. Bird lovers everywhere, farmers or ornithologists, forget the War and join the Pipit's Cause; and the blood, sweat and tears shed to protect the specimen for future science are convincing...
...Tawny Pipit. A sweet-tempered pastoral comedy about English bird lovers who practically forget the war watching a pair of rare birds (TIME...
...Tawny Pipit. Very English but very agreeable fun about a pair of rare birds that set an ornithophilous English village on its ear (TIME...
...hands of René Clair, this yarn might have become a wonderful piece of fun. Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders, who collaborated in writing and directing Pipit, are not quite equal to their idea; and Mr. Miles, who is too young to play the colonel, is not quite up to his role. Now & then the picture, probably the most intensely insular movie the British have yet exported to the U.S., becomes too clumsy or too coy; from beginning to end it is as genteel as rectory crumpets. And though none of the classical Village Types is revealed on the level...