NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 321, 17 August 1945, Page 19

NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART

(RKO-Radio)

HIS film is not true to the letter of the book by Richard Llewellyn, but it manages to catch something of its spirit. It is a serious

story and everybody concerned does try, with ‘varying success, to take it seriously. Even Cary Grant, who is never much my idea of a sensitive actor and is further handicapped here by being almost as physically unlike Llewellyn’s character of Ernie Verdun Mott, a "little bloke with pimples," as it is possible to imagine, contrives to put some feeling behind the air of arrogance and the self-conscious mannerisms that are found in every role he undertakes. Ethel Barrymore, as Ernie’s mother, does not sound like a Cockney and probably does not behave much: like one either, but she does convince you that Mrs. Mott was a rather wonderful woman. Similarly with the others--George Colouris as Mordinoy the gangster, June Duprez and Jane Wyatt as the girls in Ernie’s life, Barry Fitzgerald as a kindly Irish coster, and Konstantin Shayne as a noble old Jewish pawnbroker-they can be criticised individually as being either untrue to the book or to life, but under the direction of Clifford Odets (whose work reminds one rather of John Ford's) they do all add up to something worthwhile, It is always refreshing to find a Hollywood film.which frankly acknowledges the existence of poverty and its

effects on the lives of the under-privi-leged. Odets probably knows the Bronx better than he knows the East End of London, but the spiritual frustration and physical degradation of slum life are much the same anywhere, and so the film’s note of social criticism carries deep conviction. Nor is any last-minute attempt made to lighten the darkness; indeed when the story ends ‘it is poised for a descent into even deeper gloom, with war ‘about to engulf Ernie Mott and his world. It is left to the audience themselves, with their knowledge of what thas happened since, and particularly of what happened in Britain last month, to supply a ray of hope if they see fit.