THE CORN IS GREEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 378, 20 September 1946, Page 32

THE CORN IS GREEN

(Warner Bros.)

ERE is another top- _ grade film, one of several in the past few months -a fact which suggests either that the movies are getting better or that I am growing more tolerant. I

suspect the former. Anyway, here is something else you can get your teeth into. It is a version of the play by Emlyn Williams about an English spinster, of independent mind and rare courage, who starts a school in a Welsh mining-vil-lage in the year 1895 and triumphs over many difficulties, not only in bringing some education to the rank and file but above all in nurturing the streak of genius which she discovers in an uncouth, unbiddable pit-boy. In spite of a few false notes of atmosphere, a little excess sentiment, and an unnecessarily contrived finale, I would think that this is probably a fairly close translation of the original Williams play, for the film has real social content (for example, its exposure of illiteracy in the village and of child-labour in the mines, as well as its emphasis on the civilising power of education); it has good dialogue, genuine warmth of emotion, and well-drawn, well-rounded characters. * * x HERE afe so many positive virtues that one need not linger long over the few defects in How Green Was My

Corn-sorry, wrong cue! But the association of ideas is, in fact; natural and it illustrates one of the defects: a tendency which Hollywood has to sentimentalise the Welsh atmosphere; to make rather too much, for instance, of the fact that the Welsh like to sing. When you look into it, too, you notice that the plot dovetails a trifle too theatrically: the Squire’s hard heart softens just when the heroine wants it to, and is remoulded exactly to suit her plans; the return of the erring but unrepentant Bessie Watty with her illegitimate baby coincides so neatly with the arrival of the news that Morgan Evans, the former pit-boy who is the child’s father, has passed his examination for Oxford that you might think the situation was planned exactly this way for dramatic effect (as of course it was). But above all, the schoolmistress’s heroic final de-‘ cision is unconvincing and unnecessary -not her offer to adopt the child, but her decision that she and Morgan, the pupil on whom she has expended so, much devoted energy, must hever see one another again. A playwright can go too far for the sake of an effective curtain. * ae ET these, as I have said, are relatively minor faults. The relationship between teacher and pupil is often a fine (continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) and delicate thing; treated as it is here, it is immeasurably more profound and moving than the relationship involved in the average boy-meets-girl episode on the screen. The two who give authenticity and emotional vigour to this purely intellectual relationship in The Corn is Green are Bette Davis, as Miss Moffat, and John Dall, as Morgan Evans — one a veteran of a hundred roles, the new First Lady of the Screen; the other a complete newcomer. This is, I think, Miss Davis’s best performance for some time. She is, perhaps, a little First-Ladyish in her mannerisms, rather too conscious of her art and her own high place in it, acting too much with her head and not enough with her heart. But her Miss Moffat is, nevertheless, a real woman, a three-dimensional character. As for John Dall, the measure of his achievement is that he holds his own in this company, behaving throughout with notable intelligence and restraint. It is an admirable interpretation of a subtle and difficult part. He is not the only newcomer who catches our attention in this film; another is Joan Lorring, who spectacularly handles the role of the Cockney girl, Bessie. There is, perhaps, a trace of over-acting here, even a false note of farce; on the other hand, it is a part which demands a vivid portrayal. Some of the other members of the supporting cast are veterans of the New York stage production: in particular I suggest you watch for Rosalind Ivan’s fruity rendering of Mrs. Watty, the housekeeper who couldn’t keep out of trouble until she was converted and joined the "Ccrpse."