CLAUDIA AND DAVID

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 387, 22 November 1946, Page 22

CLAUDIA AND DAVID

(20th Century-Fox)

| SAW this film on the same occasion as the one above, and it would be almost impossible to imagine anything more different in every way

from The Wicked Lady. This time the honours are all with Hollywood. Possibly juxtaposition has heightened the contrast for me, but Claudia and David is, in its own right, a most agreeably refreshing, wholesome, and adroit little picture. It is, of course, the sequel to Claudia, Rose Franken’s play about a child-wife which has been seen here on the stage as well as on the screen,

and it is a good deal more successful than sequels usually are. Though Claudia (Dorothy McGuire) and David (Robert Young) have now enjoyed the marriage state long enough to be the parents of a three-year-old son, there are still the same kind of domestic tiffs and reconciliations, the jealousies, the near-trage-dies and the triumphs that we saw in the previous picture; Claudia is still exasperatingly juvenile in her outlook, David is still almost inhumanly forbearing. Last time it was the death of Claudia’s adored mother which formed the core of the story; this time it is a motor-acci-dent to David which, however, the audience knows will not end tragically, since that would mean the end of the series -supposing there is a series. But I should not be at all surprised if there is; for already one can see that the pattern has been laid down: a gay embroidery of domestic trivialities surrounding a central crisis which will have the effect of making the heroine grow up emotionally. There is little reason why such a series should not continue almost indefinitely, since Claudia and. David (like most American screen couples) still only have one child, but have a comfortable income, a beautiful home in the country, and plenty of room to expand, By. adding to the family, by threatening one or another member of it with death or, possibly, disgrace on each occasion, there is

no reason why the studio should not cause Claudia and David to become as popular, as persistent, and as long-lived as the Hardys. I rather hope they do; they are nice people. And if the series does continue, I also hope that Robert Young and particularly Dorothy McGuire will continue to be the stars. For, above everything else, it is the vivid, sympathetic personality of Miss McGuire which gives this new film its sense of intimacy and its very real charm, and which also, I would add, robs its sentimental moments of embarrassment. Though the broad pattern of the action is the same as before, she does manage, within that pattern, to make Claudia a developing character; the kind of person in whose future you can really feel interested,