Word: rattigan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Young Scarface (M.K.D. Distributors], imported from England three years after it was filmed, should have stayed discreetly at home. It starts with an impressive list of credits: an adaptation of Novelist Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, scripted by Greene and Terence Rattigan (see below) for the producing-directing team of John and Roy (Seven Days Till Noon) Boulting. But the film reflects little credit on any of them...
...Browning Version (J. Arthur Rank; Universal-International) is Playwright Terence (The Winslow Boy) Rattigan's own adaptation of his one-acter about a Mr. Chips-in-reverse, an unloved, dried-up academic tyrant on the way out of an English public school after 18 years. Like the play, the film daubs life liberally with greasepaint. But it is still a moving story, and lends British support to the Hollywood slogan that movies are better than ever-especially when adapted with care from successful plays or novels...
...simple act of kindness changes The Crock's life. A pupil (Brian Smith) astonishes him by presenting a parting gift, a copy of the Agamemnon in the Robert Browning translation. This gesture pierces The Crock's outer crust and strikes an emotional gusher. With the help of Rattigan's facile plotting, it leads to the wife's comeuppance at the hands of her lover and, finally, to a rebellious upsurge of self-respect in The Crock...
...recent years of exchange between London's Shaftesbury Avenue and New York's Broadway have been fruitful ones for the theatre. The introduction of Christopher Fry and Terrence Rattigan are two of the more important benefits derived at this end, and the English can be thankful for several excellent musical comedies as well as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller...
...Rattigan's fidelity to Rattigan is also responsible for some troublesome defects. He commits the serious cinematic sin of letting his climax - the boy's final legal victory - take place offscreen, as it did offstage. In the play, the impossibly haughty barrister who wins the case was a rich treat of tasteful theatrical ham. But the grand-mannered role is so patently written to be played across footlights that, before the lifelike intimacy of the camera, even a technically flawless performance by Robert Donat fails to inspire belief. Usually an adept dramatic craftsman, Scripter Rattigan also runs...