SPRING IN PARK LANE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 526, 22 July 1949, Page 12

SPRING IN PARK LANE

(London. Films) HOUGH they are immensely popular in Britain, the Anna Neagle-Her-bert Wilcox films have in the past usually left me rather less than enthusiastic. During The Courtneys of Curzon Street I aged terribly, and I was

not unduly enthusiastic about the advent of Spring in Park Lane — there seemed to be something disturbingly familiar about the title. But I was quite delightfully mistaken. Of the three films which made up this week’s stint-one French, one English, one American-the English production, unpretentious, artless, even trivial if you like, pleased me most. No doubt that was partly because I had not expected too much, but in the main’ Spring in Park Lane succeeds as entertainment because it uses the light touch excellently well. It is, of course, the old familiar Wilcox stamping-ground. How pleasant to live in Park Lane! Everyone is wellheeled, or well-born, the young men are handsome, the women (or Anna Neagle, at least) are ever young and always beautiful, even Tom Walls has ripened to a rich old tawny mellowness. God’s in his Heaven, the pound is at par, and you can almost hear the nightingales in Berkeley Square. It is all so innocuous (unless one happens to view it with a jaundiced socio-economic eye), and it could all be so ineffably. boring if it were not handled properly. I suspect that it would have been boring enough if it hadn’t been for the good work of Nicholas Phipps who took the story by Alice Duer ("The White Cliffs of Dover") Miller and rewrote it for the screen. The rewriting was, I imagine, extensive, and it is surprisingly good. The dialogue is brisk, brightly-polished and well-handled — in particular by Michael Wilding whose performance as the Old Etonian turned footman has wit and grace as well as comedy to commend it. As for Anna Neagle’s performance, it was as sweet and wholesome as might be expected of (continued on next page)