Film Into Radio Play

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 8

Film Into Radio Play

SETTLED down with relish the other Thursday night to listen to James Mason and Pamela Kellino in 2ZB’s Radio -Theatre version of The Upturned Glass, and found to my distress that instead of concertina-ing the

original action into the smaller compass of half-an-hour and sacrificing a few relevant details the pair hdd elected to perform an occipitectomy right in the middle of the plot. This was, of course, very disconcerting to the filmgoer, who had had no. time to divorce his preconceived idea; and I was left obstinately refusing to believe that the eminent brain specialist had performed his felo de se in so unworkmanlike and unMasonlike a fashion, and long before anyone had been able to explain to him the significance of the title. Had I not seen the film I think I should still have been distressed at the complete absence of any suggestion of retribution. The shorter version, on the other hand, is much. more forthright in its early diagnosis of James Mason’s madness, ‘so that the whole thing, in spite of identical dialogue, seems much more obvious. And the fact that there are two versions, both presumably’ by the same pen, makes one wonder whether Pamela Kellino believed in her own creation. It is rather as if-Shakespeare, having written Hamlet, decided to prepare a shorter version (with Hamlet applying the bare bodkin to himself after stabbing Polonius) for players who didn’t feel equal to three acts.