MINE OWN EXECUTIONER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 10

MINE OWN EXECUTIONER

(Korda-London Films)

HIS is a film which I would recommend to anyone, but particularly to those who still harbour the old notion that intelligent and original thinking is not to be expected from the Services. For Mine Own Executioner is, in a way, a Combined Operationit was produced ‘and directed by Anthony Kimmins, who, as Captain Anthony Kimmins, R.N.; Chief of Naval Information for the Pacific, visited New Zealand in H.M.S. Indefatigable in 1945; and it is based on the novel of the same name by Brigadier Nigel Bal-

chin, a GSO at the "War Office (who is, I discover, also the author of a_ book entitled How to Run a Bassoon Factory). Balchin wrote his own screenplay and I am sure that few who have read the book will be disappointed in the film. One would indeed be unusually hard to please if one didn’t enjoy it-and that in spite of the psychological motif. A week ago I would have sworn that seeing one more film about schizophrenia would turn me into a_ schizophrenic myself — and very probably one maliciously allergic to theatremanagers. Now I feel that that particular psychosis has been exorcised. for the time being at least. What appealed to

me first about Mine Own Executioner (and I imagine others will feel the same about it) was its candour and commonsense. It is candidly and honestly a film about psycho-analysis. It makes no bones about its theme, and it plunges you straight into it from the outset. It presents the psychiatrist, not as a refined kind of witch-doctor, but as an individual with his own share of worry and self-doubt. And, most important of all, there is nothing rechercké about the schizophrenic whose malady is the mainspring of the action. In direction, acting, and photography much of the film’s excellence is, due to what you might call uncommon commonsense. The acting of Burgess Meredith and Kieron Moore is particularly good. Meredith plays the part of a skilful but medically unqualified psychiatrist with a rather tangled emotional life of his own. Moore, a young Irish actor, appears as an _ ex-serviceman whose sufferings in a Japanese prison-camp have disturbed the balance of his mind to such an extent that he has attempted to kill his wife. The surroundings in which these two’ first meet are familiar

enough-the inviting couch, the drawn blinds, the dim light, and the probing questions have all figured a score of times on the screen-but this was the first time they seemed to be the real thing, and the quality of the acting had a good deal to do with that. But if the acting was good, the photography was excellent. There was one sequence-a flashback in which Moore lived through once more the circumstances of his capture and the torture he went through at the hands of. the

Japanese — which conveyed more vividly than any written narrative could the _ horrors that some of these prisoners-of-war endured. This _ sequence (and a number of others in the film) was given an almost terrifying realism by using the camera in place. of the actor’s eyes. The most dramatic moments in the film depend entirely on the camera, and not once do I recall the camera failing. Nothing of significance seems to have been missed, from a_ tiny pebble rolling on a London pavement to . the Malayan jungle rushing upward as-an airman bales out-the latter an astonishing Piece of camera work. Some may find that the last two or

three hundred feet of the film drag a little. True, it does not end with a bang, but on the other hand it doesn’t end with a whimper. .It sounded to me more like a wry chuckle and, in the circumstances, that seemed to make a better ending than either of the classic alternatives.