THE BISHOP'S WIFE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 484, 1 October 1948, Page 25

THE BISHOP'S WIFE

(Goldwyn) (COMMAND performance or no.Command performance, The Bishop’s Wife is, I suspect, going to cause a certain amount of spiritual discomfort among those who take their Christianity ‘seriously. And that is a great pity, for, apart from the one lapse which overshadows the picture, The Bishop’s Wife is a gentle and amusing piece of fantasy. The lapse Sits good taste of which the producer is guilty (it can hardly be called blasphemy, since that implies the intent to blaspheme) lies in presenting Cary Grant as an angel, and ‘then threatening to involve .him as the eternal angle in a triangle, By drawing its supetnatural visitants from Mount Olympus, or more indeterminate celestial regions, Hollywood has in the past managed to produce some quite passable fantasies -- most filmgoers will have pleasant recollections of Mr. Jordan and hig associates -but that.particular brand of pixilated whimsy does not fit very happily. into the pattern’ of revealed religion. As a sort of plainclothes Santa Claus (it is a Christmas story) Cary Grant is a pleasant if somewhat sentimental person. The Rt. Rey, David Niven seems a little nervous and unsure of himself for a Bishop (it is possibly a more

nerve-racking job in the States), but Wellingtonians at least could enjoy the problems he encounters in trying to raise money for a cathedral. Loretta Young makes a demurely attractive bishop’s wife, Monty Woollcott-Wool-ley, I mean-is all one expects of him, and there are James Gleason and Elsa Lanchester for good measure. The cast, in short, is good, and even though the story were hock-deep in whimsy, I might have been pleasantly entertained by it had Cary Grant not, on his first encounter with the Bishop, announced quite cheerfully, "I’m Dudley-I’m an angel. No wings at the moment," and then gone on to remind Mr, Niven that "we are interested even in the lowliest sparrow." | I won’t deny that most of the dialogue was harmless and some of it was good. I will admit that once or twice I laughed loudly (when, for example, Dudley remarked that if any letters came for him the stamps would be worth saving), but the vestigial remnants of a congenital calvinism kept me in a constant prickle of discomfort. I’m sorry that what might have been a pleasant film was spoiled for some (others may find it quite acceptable), but I am more sorry that those who wrote the story and produced the picture did not have the savvy to realise that what they were doing could cause offence. ;