Word: rattigan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Deep Blue Sea (London Film; 20th Century-Fox), if not soap opera, is certainly no better than detergent drama. In this British movie, Playwright Terence (The Winslow Boy) Rattigan seems to be cautioning the middle-aged married woman about switching from a dull husband to a young lover: the change may only mean a painful, new set of harness sores...
...trouble with the work of Terence Rattigan, one of Britain's leading playwrights since 1936, is that he frequently says what he thinks is clever instead of saying what he means. The method works fairly well in blazer farce and weekend melodrama, but when it comes to hearing the human heartbeat of a situation, Rattigan might as well be hunting uranium with an ear trumpet. Moreover, in The Deep Blue Sea, the leading lady does little to help. The part is scored, though crudely, for the full cello notes of womanly anguish; Vivien plays it in the thin pizzicato...
Screenwriter Terrence Rattigan has obviously written a satire. But with the exception of a few wonderful scenes invilving Robert Morley as a egotistical poet, The Final Test resembles too closely the kind of film it lampoons...
...sympathy with failure or timidity, and although he suffers at his son-in-law's death, one feels that he considers it a cheap price for the ultimate gain. This is a difficult part to play. Some actors might make Ridgeway a bare, two-dimensional character, since Terrence Rattigan's script alone does not delineate him sufficiently. But Richardson, by his voice inflection, doodling at his desk, and various other mannerisms fills out the role...
Margaret Sullavan, though uneven, brings far more integrity to the playing of Hester Collyer than Rattigan does to the part. The expert Alan Webb is floored as the husband; as the playboy, James Hanley comes off much better in the play's best role. As somebody who would love and cherish Hester if he could, he perhaps reflects something in Rattigan himself. Rattigan seems not so much unwilling to do right by his material as incapable...