UNCLE HARRY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 365, 21 June 1946, Page 33

UNCLE HARRY

(Universal)

T is something of a responsibility to say it, but I would -advise you to disregard entirely the notice which comes on the screen at the end of

Uncle Harry, to this effect: "In order not to spoil the climax for others, you are asked not to reveal the end of this film." I would go further: I would’ suggest that you should ascend forthwith to your housetop and there shout out the news that this is a good film spoilt, thougi not ruined, by a silly device which pretends that the murder committed in it is only a dream. In this way you may safeguard the enjoyment of your friends and neighbours. When one knows what to expect, the deflation isn’t quite so bad. In fact, having been forewarned I enjoyed Uncle Harry, a psychological thri)ler, quite a lot. But I am still marvelling at the wonderful ways of Hollywood; because this "dream" business, tacked on in order to provide a happy ending at all costs, is exactly the same stunt as was used in A Woman in the Window just a few months ago (only here it is an even more dismal failure). Still more, however, I marvel at the Hays Office, which will not let a film get away. with murder, but lets it get away with incest. The film is pretty discreet about this, of course, but it is the unnatural and thoroughly unhealthy affection of a sister for her brother which motivates this screen version of a stage play by Thomas Job: it leads to a broken romance, vengeance which miscarries when the wrong victim swallows the dog-poison, and a brilliantly sardonic sequence (building up for the big let-down) in which the neurotic sister goes to the gallows for the murder her brother committed-and goes rejoicing fiendishly because of the torments of conscience she knows he will suffer for the rest of his days. a ae ae S will be realised, this isn’t exactly a "nice" picture, but except for the finale which treats the customers as if they were children, it is an adult one. As the girl whose feelings are more than sisterly, Geraldine Fitzgerald gives an intense yet contained performance which is remarkable less for what it reveals than for the undertones of suggestion which it contains. George Sanders is the gentle, amiable, rather ineffectual brother, bowed down by the task of maintaining a decayed family tradition in a gossipy small American town and

keeping two quarrelsome sisters out of reach of one another and himself; Ella Raines is the girl from New York who breezes into the town, wakes him up, and makes him think feverishly about matrimony; and Moyna MacGill is the well-meaning but empty-headed other sister who approves the marriage but gets the dog-poison by mistake. Uncle Harry was directed by Robert Siodmak and produced by Joan Harrison, Alfred Hitchcock’s one-time protégée. The respect which I felt for Miss Harrison on seeing her previous production, Phantom Lady, is increased by her work in this new picture, especially since I have learnt that she gave up her‘ con. tract with Universal in disgust at the tagged-on "dream" ending.