EDWARD, MY SON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 24

EDWARD, MY SON

(M.G.M.) WAS a good deal more impressed by the supporting cast of Edward, My Son than by the two principals, Spencer Tracy and Deborah Kerr. Tracy, I. will say, worked harder and was much more convincing than he was in the last two films I saw him in-Cass Timberlane and The World and His Wife. But he is not the type to play the ruthless and ‘amoral Lord Boult. Where a suave urbanity would be in order he is cosily familiar-geniality oozes from every pore; and when he is being ruthless one senses that a mask is being placed in position instead of being dropped. Nor did Deborah Kerr seem altogether comfortable either. Her voice is always good, as if she constantly listened to it herself, and in the earlier and middle reaches of the film her acting was adequate if not always inspired. But as the aging and despondent Lady Boult she was too maudlin for my taste and the make-up man seemed to have gone to work a little too enthusiastically. Neither she nor Tracy produced in me the authentic shudder which the story should have evoked. And I must also register a mild protest at the dramatic dishonesty of the prologue and epilogue, in which Boult addresses the theatre audience directly. Good drama has no need of an interlocutor, and certainly should not depend on one for dramatic effect. . Among the smaller people of the cast ---the secondary players and the walkon parts-the drama is good. As Boult’s secretary and later his mistress, Leueen MacGrath stands out sharply, and Mervyn Johns gives a neat performance as the timorous swindler who eventually commits suicide. In the part of a private detective, Ernest Jay introduces a piece of short-lived comic relief which came most effectively in a rather overheated sequence and one or two other even more abbreviated character-parts were equally good. All of these players helped substantially to atone for unevenness on the higher levels and the result was a film .which, if on the whole undistinguished, was still a worthy effort.