MARGIE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 403, 14 March 1947, Page 14

MARGIE

(20th Centrry-Fox)

OING back two decades for its story and settings, Margie depicts the manners and modes of co-educational college life in the U.S.A.

circa 1928, with special attention to such eccentric manifestations as flagpolesitting, goldfish-swallowing, raccoon coats, rolled stockings, and Rudy Vallee. It therefore offers some explanation of how modern Americans now in their middle thirties got. the way they are. But though the interest in Margie is partly sociological, any feelings of superiority which it might be likely to engender in us are quickly swallowed up by the realisation that young people today are just as scatty as they were then, and that crazes and "crushes" are by no means confined to North America, even though they do appear to reach their most exotic flowering on that continent. In view of this, audiences may prefer to look on Margie not as sociology but simply as a nostaligically sentimental, mildly embarrassing comedy about sweet young love (young to the point of being precocious, and sweet to the point of

being sugary), with an agreeable starring performance by Jeanne Craine and some rather florid technicolour photography. The 16-year-old heroine operates throughout the story under no small handicap: her father is a mortician (undertaker to you), the grandmother who looks after her was a militant suffragette and can’t forget it, and she herself is continually being let down in a place where every young lady likes to feel secure. Without stretching the truth too far, it would be correct to say that the slight plot is held together by the elastic in Margie’s bloomers: at almost every big moment jn Margie’s young life -such as a skating party on the ice, or a dance-this support gives way. By the third time it happens the audience is almost as embarrassed as the heroine and is beginning to wish not only that Margie would be a little more careful or invest in a few safety-pins, but also that the director would think up some new way of disguising the inadequacies of the plot. But by that time the story is over and Margie, — has gone through girlish ago because she feels she is the seri type, good at debating and therefore unacceptable to husky football-playing young

louts, has walked off in triumph with the handsome French teacher under the very noses of her more glamorous rivals. The story is told in flash-back, by a 34-year-old Margie, to her bobby-soxed, teen-aged daughter who has been rummaging in the attic and has turned up an old photograph album and some out-oi-date gramophone records. In evoking memories of those old and happy faroff things and bloomers long ago, the music of 1928 ("Avalon," "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You," "Button Up Your Overcoat," "Ain’t She Sweet?" ) is more potent than the photography and the acting.