TEMPTATION HARBOUR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 466, 28 May 1948, Page 19

TEMPTATION HARBOUR

(A.B.P.) HAVE not always been satisfied with the acting of Robert Newton, but I have never been quite sure if the fault lay with Newton himself or with the directors who pushed him around. In general I felt that he over-acted his parts (as in Hatter’s Castle and Odd Man Out), that his mobile features and expansive gestures were often more fully mobilised and expanded than the situation warranted. Indeed, the one part which I remember him under-playing was that of Ancient Pistol where (as / read Henry V.) a little more rodomontade would hardly have been out of order, But a Shakespearian interpretation is no doubt much more closely controlled by the direction than the ordinary film-part, and. who am I to suggest, etc., etc. In Zemptation Harbour, however, Newton plays a simple, straightforward part, and plays it with hardly a false . gesture or a false inflection. Once or twice I thought his eyes bulged a little more than was necessary to emphasise the emotion of the moment, but it would be ungenerous to deny him the commendation which he earns. I have it on the authority of one of The Listener’s book critics that Georges Simenon-from whose NewhavenDieppe this film-story is adapted-# in a class by himself as a writer of detective fiction. I have not read anything by Simenon myself but whatever liberties may have been taken with him in this instance (the action is confined to the Newhaven end of the ferry-run) the story does not seem to have suffered in credibility, atmosphere, or dramatic power. But though it is a crime-story, with an ex-member of the Surete in the cast, it is in no sense a mystery-thriller, The first scene, set in one of those working-class interiors which the English studios contrive with such affectionate attention to detail, not only introduces us to the two principal characters-New-ton, a railway signalman, and Margaret Barton, his little daughter-but through the astute handling of dialogue and camera reveals the tensions which exist in the tiny household. Not unsubtly, the scene also manages to foreshadow therdramfatic conflict of the story by hinting at the vulnerable points in the father’s spiritual defences-his honesty in small things, which seems more a matter of spiritual discipline than of moral standards, his inarticulate affection for his child, and his personal lone- liness (he is a widower), That is a fair amount to glean from one brief sequence, but one of the enjoyable things about Temptation Harbour is the amount one learns, or seems to learn, about all the characters. There is not a playing-card among them. They are all-with perhaps one partial excep-tion-well-rounded, believable people who, one feels, have their own existence independent of the story. The story itself is not a startlingly original one. Newton, on night-shift in

a signal-box beside the Dieppe ferrywharf, sees from his point of vantage two men struggling on the edge of the breastwork. One is struck and falls with a scream isto the harbour while the other makes off. Horrified, the signalman dives in to the rescue, but all he finds is an attaché case which the unknown had been carrying. Packed neatly inside it are banknotes to the value of £5000. From this point the story could haye been a rather hackneyed one, revolving round the old question of the price of a man’s honesty. The film, however, by playing alternately on the weaknesses and strengths of the signalman’s character, and by drawing into the action others who in turn reinforce him in his cupidity. or cause him to react against it, so embroiders the trite theme that one is never quite sure what will be the outcome of the moral struggle. In the end it is something more than consideretions of honesty which tips the scales and precipitates the crisis. The film abounds in artfully drawn scenes, One of these, which introduces Simone Simon as Mlle. Camellia the Atomic Mermaid, is as witty a picture of a fairground sideshow as I have seen. As a small-time siren, Mlle." Simon delivers her preposterous lines with just the air of boredom needed to touch off the comedy. I was not quite so happy with her subsequent performance as the woman Newton turns to in his loneliness, but William Hartnell, as the crook who murdered one man in his first attempt to get hold of the £5000, and who pursues Newton throughout the film, turns in an excellent performance. So does Margaret Barton, who provides, inter alia, one of the most nerve-stretching screams I have heard in months,