PICCADILLY INCIDENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 425, 15 August 1947, Page 30

PICCADILLY INCIDENT

(Associated British)

ECAUSE several readers have lately been suggesting that I always give unqualified praise to British pictures, my disappointment in

this Herbert Wilcox production is tempered by the mild satisfaction of being able to prove them wrong. And what should make the proof positive is the fact that Piccadilly Incident is the film which, by a poll of newspaper-readers in Britain, was voted as the best of last year. Piccadilly Incident seems to be trying, at the beginning and the end, to make some valid social comment on the subject of illegitimacy, as it affects a child whose father and mother have married in the erroneous belief that the father’s ‘first wife is dead. This is a theme which, expertly and responsibly handled, would’ make good drama, but it gives the impression here of having been dragged in more or less as an afterthought; it is purely incidental to the story, instead of being fundamental, Instead we concern ourselves with the whirlwind- wartime courtship of Diana Fraser, a Wren (Anna Neagle), by Captain. Alan Pearson (Michael Wilding), their marriage, and _ separation after a* few hours, when she is posted to Singapore. Escaping from there on a ship’ which is torpedoed by the Japanese, she and five other survivors eventually land on an uncharted Pacific island, wheré for three dreary years she valiantly defends her honour against the advances of a former sweetheart (Michael Lawrence) who, by an equally implausible twist in the story, happened to be in the same boat. Meanwhile her husband, having mourned her sufficiently,. has in the interests of Anglo-American solidarity, married a U.S. war-worker and begotten a son. Back comes Diana, honour intact and (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) bounding with happiness, only to be crushed by disappointment and, very soon, by a falling wall in an air-raid-this, presumably, being the only solution which the scriptwriter could devise for the difficult situation in which he had involved his characters. He doesn’t, however, attempt to deal with the illegitimacy problem: he simply states the case rather timidly and leaves it at that. Anna Neagle is a good and sincere actress; Herbert Wilcox is a good and sincere producer and director; and the others in the film all go about their jobs s if they meant well. But the failure ’ Piccadilly Incident to ®merge, in the y round, as anything much more than a lachrymose melodrama with a_ strong flavour of the novelette should convince even the most bigoted admirers of British films that good intentions and a strong cast are not sufficient substitute or a taut script and a clear sense of direction. However, in view of that _-newspaper-poll and the box-6ffice popularity of the film, I am under no illusions that they will be convinced.