SPEAKING CANDIDLY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 32

SPEAKING CANDIDLY

(Paramount)

HOUGH it is set in 18th Century England, this film is really just Pygmalion without Bernard Shaw-and,. as should be readily conceded,

that is quite a lot to'be without. I make no. claim to originality in noticing ‘the similarity between the two stories; ’ at least half the audience must have noticed it at the same moment as I did. There was, indeed, a rather remarkable spontaneous tribute paid to the durability of the G.B.S. masterpiece when, at the point in Kitty where Sir Hugh Marcy and his aunt first set about transforming the guttersnipe into a lady of quality, one heard the words "Pygmalion" and "Shaw" coming from at least four different directions. However, this loyal demonstration fairly soon subsided and most of the audience seemed well enough content to watch Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard duplicating, in kneebreeches and ‘Gainsborough gowns, the actions if not the conversation of Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, There are, of course, some variations* on the familiar theme. It is one Thomas Gainsborough; (you know it is Gainsborough before his name is mentioned because there is the "Blue Boy" right in his studio) who first notices the beauty beneath the grime on Kitty’s face when she tries to snatch the buckled

shoes from off his feet. Instead of giving her up to the Bow Street Runners, he takes her in, applies soap and water and a fashionable gown, and paints her portrait as an anonymous great lady. At this point, the profligate Sir Hugh (Ray Milland) takes over the job of guiding Kitty’s career from a Houndsditch hovel to high society; hard pressed by his creditors, he prepares her as the bait with which to hook a lecherous old duke (Reginald Owen) who has promised him a well-paid job in the Foreign Office as reward. The scene in which Sir Hugh and his aunt (Constance Collier) begin the education of Kitty is an almost exact copy of Pygmalion, even to the elocutionlesson. So Kitty mounts upward and the wastrelly Sir Hugh reaps the benefit from her two marriages, the first to a rich ironmonger who comes to a violent end, and the second to the doddering old Duke of Malmunster who dies of a surfeit of port Wine and joy brought about by the delusion that he has fathered Kitty’s son. By this time, we are led to believe, Kitty really has been transformed into a Duchess in all but blueness of blood, and several scenes too many later Sir Hugh is transformed into a good man by the revelation that she has done it all for love of him. She dashes down a_ handsome _ staircase straight past the Prince of Wales and into Sir Hugh’s regenerate arms.

Ray Milland is rather apathetic in his thankless role, as if slightly ashamed of the disreputable behaviour which the plot demands of him. But in spite of a phoney-Cockney accent which breaks out at odd moments, Paulette Goddard is pretty good as the "hussy" of the piece; she is high-spirited and she looks the part. Cecil Kellaway as Gainsborough, Constance Collier as the aunt, and several of the other supporting players perform with a nice sense of period; and the director (Mitchell Liesen) and his cameramen have managed to catch something of the elegance, pomposity, and squalor of the era through their treatment of the settings and costumes. All in all, the new Pygmalion is an amusing enough spectacle even without benefit of Bernard.