BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 94, 10 April 1941, Page 16

BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON

(M-G-M)

OME time ago, Robert Montgomery declared, in a fit of fed-upness, that "any resemblance between the motion-picture industry and

creative art is purely coincidental," and I have met at least one indignant Dorothy Sayers fan who was prepared to apply this dictum to the resemblance between Montgomery’s new film, Busman’s Honeymoon, and the original novel by Miss Sayers. I do not agree, but I mention it because. it is typical of the criticism that any film based on a popular novel must be prepared to face. Personalfy, I think most people will enjoy the picture better for having read the book. I’m sure I did, and I concede first place to nobody in my devotion to the Lord Peter Wimsey stories. I’ve got my own preconceived ideas about what Lord Peter and Harriet Vane should look like, and how they should behave; but even if Robert Montgomery and Constance Curamings didn’t quite fit those ideas, and even if the producer did decide that the Great General Public couldn’t "take it" when Lord Peter and the Inspector carry on their game of matching Shakespearian quotations — even so there is still enough Dorothy Sayers left in the film to make it a good deal better-than-average murder mystery. Bunter, the perfect valet, as played by Sir Seymour Hicks, is genuine Sayers. So are several of the other characters who surround the aristocratic amateur detective and his’ bride, a mystery novelist, and frustrate all their efforts to enjoy a quiet honeymoon and have done with murder and mystery for good. Hardly have the whimsical Lord Peter and his Harriet settled down to "rough it" with a case of champagne and the impeccable Bunter in the country house which is His Lordship’s wedding gift to the bride than their idyll is shattered by Bunter’s discovery that the cellar contains the murdered body of Noakes, the house’s former tenant. Since Noakes was a most unpleasant fellow who prac-

tised usury and theft on his neighbours and relatives, there is a cloud of suspects, including the twittering Miss Twitterton, the young local constable, a handyman named Crutchley (Robert Newton), and even the vicar of the village. The film is rather less concerned with the actual mystery than with Lord Peter's waverings between his vow to sleuth no more and his professional desire to help his friend the Inspector (Leslie Banks) and be in at the death. This dilemma eats up a good deal of the footage, but produces some glib dialogue. When Lord Peter at last gives way and agrees to solve just one more crime, it is all over very quickly. Busman’s Honeymoon is very English in accent, atmosphere, and scenery. It may not be up to the standard of those other M-G-M pictures made in England -A Yank at Oxford, The Citadel, and Good-bye Mr. Chips-but there was a war on while they made this one, and Nazi bombers were sometimes not far off the studios at Denham. It says a good deal forthe nerves of the com,

pany and the organisation of the studio that the atmosphere is as unruffled and polite and the production as smooth as it is.