THE GREAT MR. HANDEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 25

THE GREAT MR. HANDEL

(G-B-D)

FTER five years, and with no excuse offered for his dilatoriness, The Great Mr. Handel hae at last reached | these benighted shores. I

Think we may say better iate ‘than never, because in an odd sort of way this is an _ attractive little picture which it would have been a pity to have missed altogether. But if you want an indication of the progress which British film-making has made during the past half-decade, particularly on the production sid@ I suggest you compare Mr. Handel with the new film I have just reviewed, or with almost any recent production from the Rank Studios. You will also gain some idea of how Mr. Rank’s own approach to the cinema has broadened, for it was his money which backed this production in 1942, presumably because its themethe "debts, doubts, and diet" of the 18th Century composer, climaxed by his writing of Messiah-coincided with Mr. Rank’s interest in religious films. The chief assets of The Great Mr. hn are gracious music and gracious colour: the film is good to look upon es well as to hear, thanks to Sidney Gausden, the art director; on the one hand, and to Mr. Handel and the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the other. But in other respects it reveals a naiveté, a technical ingenuousness, which is little short of remarkable. Handel’s life in Englard is told in jerky, almost unconnected episodes -- a series of agreeable tableaux vivants rather than a flowing screen narrative, The settings give a proper sense of period, but the acting seldom conveys a sense of real people. For all his very human difficulties with creditors, arrogant patfons, and 45 demands of the box-office, Wilfrid awson’s Handel never emerges as a character in the round. He composes his great sacred oratorio under the stimulus of magic-lantern visions on his livingroom wall. However, most of these immaturities of treatment can be forgotten in the culminating performance of the Hallelujah’ Chorus. This did not bring the Little Man to his feet, as it brought King: George and the original audience, but it moved him to applause.