THE MAGIC BOW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 25

THE MAGIC BOW

Rank- Gainsboroush

ANOTHER famous musiciancomposer takes a beating from the film industry. This time it is Paganini (Stewart Granger); and this time it is

a British studio which is responsible for the third-rate romancing that gets in the way of the music. Since the music is provided (off-screen) by Yehudi Menuhin we, should perhaps be grateful for small mercies; but it seems a waste of a fine artist to treat him in this uninspired and discourteous way. I say discourteous because nearly every time Mr. Granger-Paganini seizes his violin and Mr. Menuhin begins to play it, ebody slams a door or files through ‘iron bar or laughs or sneezes or tmearches up an aisle and interrupts the performance. The film certainly redeemed itself a little in my ears in the final sequence when the Granger-Menuhin-Paganini combination chose what happens to be my favourite piece of music to play at a command performance at the Vatican --the last movement of Beethoven’s violin concerto. But even so, one is probetably better advised to take this sort \6f music straight from the radio or the gramophone, without the distractions of fancy-dresses, lavish settings, insipid melodrama masquerading as history, and all those extraneous noises I have mentioned, However, The Magic Bow is the kind of bad British film, ostentatious and wastefully expensive, which (as I was saying last week) one has every reason to hope Mr. Rank will now have to give up making, in view of Britain’s economic difficulties,