TO EACH HIS OWN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 386, 15 November 1946, Page 33

TO EACH HIS OWN

(Paramount)

HIS also stars Miss de Havilland, whom I gladly confess I always find pleasant to look at, however nonsensical the role she is playing.

And if it comes to that, I must admit I prefer the Victorian fatuities and pretty period costumes and settings of a film like Devotion to the mournful modern-style melodrama of a_ picture such as this.. However, it is really only the setting that is the least bit modern about To Each His Own, the theme of which belongs unblushingly to the East Lynne "And-he-never-called-me-mother" school of playwriting. As it happens, the illegitimate son of Miss Joady (or is it Judy?) Norris does call her mother, right at the end, thereby soaking, I imagine, the last dry corner of the last handkerchief in the theatre. But this happy outcome is not reached until Miss de Havilland has proved, to the satisfaction of the Johnston Office and possibly of a major portion of the audience, that the wages of three hours’ sin with an airman in the First World War amount to 11,112 feet of tear-sodden suffering. On this point the picture is quite explicit: "You sinned; you must pay for it all the: rest of your life,’ says Miss Norris’s father on hearing the scandalous news. Thereafter Miss Norris pays and pays ard pays. Her scheme to adopt the baby goes awry; her attempts to win his affection and assert her position as mother recoil on her own head; she sublimates her maternal instincts by becoming a highly successful businesswoman, but her triumph is a hollow one. Until

the last scene-a wedding ceremony in the private chapel of a London restaurant during the Blitz, arranged through the good offices and influential connections of Lord Dashem-her only crumbs of comfort are derived from contemplating an album of baby-photographs and her attempts to engineer "chance" encounters with her son. "I know this is foolish of me," she admits, "but it does keep me alive." In my opinion, this is more than can be said of the film. Apart from its effect on the tearducts (and probably the box-office) the major achievement of To Each His Own is that for the greater part of its length it presents Miss de Havilland not as her comely young self, but.in the fairly convincing make-up of a handsome middle-aged woman.