KIPPS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 134, 16 January 1942, Page 10

KIPPS

(Gaumont British)

HEN I first heard that Michael Redgrave was to play Kipps I was dismayed. I had seen him playing the romantic lead with

Elizabeth Bergner in Stolen Life, and the gallant hero in The Lady, Vanishes, and I couldn’t bear to think of his 72 inches being whittled down to the stature of H. G. Wells’s harassed little draper’s assistant. However, in spite of this physical handicap for his leading man Director Carol Reed shows unusual respect for the characters, dialogue, and essential spirit of the Wells novel. The settings and atmosphere, too, recapture faithfully the true flavour of Edwardianism. For an hour and a half you find yourself living in another world and another age, and yet in a world and an age that has a nostalgic familiarity. Many of us remember it; to the younger of us it recalls rainy afternoons when mother let us look through the postcard collection or the family album, and we saw just such pictures of piers, promenades, and punting on the river, boaters and bicycles, gallantry and Gibson Girls. When I came out of the theatre after seeing Kipps I heard a woman in front of me remark, "I like a picture like that after a week’s hard work." Per-

haps that is the reason for the warm and happy feeling which the film gave me, It was so delightfully restful-and "escapist." There is no suggestion of fighting one’s way to the top and wresting success from the unwilling hands of the gods. It is the perfect vindication of the "simple soul." But to get back to Michael Redgrave. When you first see a weedy youth hurrying to the counter to serve an impatient customer you think "This can’t possibly be Michael Redgrave." By the time you’ve realised that it is, you’ve become so used to Kipps that for the duration of the film, you forget there is such a person as Michael Redgrave. It’s merely Kipps swanking on the pier, Kipps listening with half-open mouth to a lecture on _ self-improve-ment, Kipps improving himself, Kipps walking out, pronouncing his aitches, unpronouncing them again, getting married, losing his fortune, finding some of it again, He is so diffident you want to shake him, and so good-natured and trusting that you want to pat him. It must be difficult to portray a simple soul without conveying an impression of dim-wittedness, yet there is nothing of the dim-wit about Michael Red; grave’s Kipps, though perhaps there is something a little other-worldly. As Miss Walshingham, the "other woman" (several steps up) in Kipp’s life, Diana Wynward finds her happiest role since Cavalcade, I was rather disappointed with her in Freedom Radio, but perhaps it is merely that an Edwardian setting (or set) suits her better than an Adolphian. But it is to Phyllis Calvert, as Ann Porrick, that I award most of the feminine laurels (Miss Wynyard, after all, gets most of the feminine fig leaves). Miss Calvert’s Ann is a charming and lively person, and there is an impression of strength and sincerity beneath her charm and liveliness. And so it is without misgiving that, at the end of the picture, we leave.our hero in her capable, hands and say "Good-bye, Mr, Kipps."