THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 548, 23 December 1949, Page 24

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS

(Rank-Eagle-Lion) A TEAR or two has been shed in Britain because this film, " which was made by one of the most brilliant teams that could be assembled in the country, did not turn out the masterpiece it might have been. It was directed by ‘David Lean, who has made some of the best British films in recent years (including Great Expectations and Brief Encounter), scripted by Eric Ambler (The Mask of Dimitrios, etc.), with music composed by Richard Addinsell and played by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Muir Mathieson, and acted by Trevor Howard, Ann Todd, and Claude Rains. The film is based on H. G. Wells’s novel, and no expense seems to have been spared to make it a top-noteh production. It is a good film, exciting, romantic, and richly composed, but judged by its own high standards it is a little disappointing. The fault is largely David Lean’s, and an interesting parallel can be drawn between this picture and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. Both directors were so obsessed withthe way they were telling’ their story that they let the story itself slip momentarily out of their grasp. In terms of pure cinema some of the scenes in The Passiongte Friends dre brilliantly ‘"con¢éeived-notably ‘in the skilful intercutting that heightens the suspense while Claude Rains is watching the lake through, his binoculars, unaware that the lovers are there in a speedboat, or the scene where he gazes at the two empty seats.in the theatre while the sound-track blares forth the noisy inanities of the picture they were supposed to be seeing. Or there is the climactic scene where she goes down into the deserted underground station to throw herself under a train, or the earlier quarre] among the three of them. Individually these are superb scenes, but somehow they do not add up to a completely triumphant whole. Technique has become an obsession with Lean in this film and at times it is

rather hackneyed technique at that. Thus the shots of telephone lines while operators talk in foreign tongues is a trick unworthy of the film, and another weakness is the needlessly confusing flashback technique used during the first few teels. Yet the occasional stilted effect shouldn’t blind one to the film’s real qualities. The photography is consistently good, with effective use of spotlighted close-ups of Ann Todd. There are impressive settings to® especially in the Swiss Alps, where the lovers go up by funicular almost to the roof of the world. This incident is the crux of the film. When the two passionate friends-they had been lovers before she married Rains, and had also had a brief affaire ten years ago when her husband was away on a diplomatic mission-spend an innocent day in the mountains talking over old times, Rains mistakenly sues for divorce, and from there things move rapidly to the climax. It is inevitable that The Passionate Friends will be compared with Brief Encounter, because of the strong similarity in plot, because it has the same director, and because Trevor Howard appears in an almost identical role. But whereas Brief Encounter was told with directness and restraint, the glossy romanticism of The Passionate Friends doesn’t make up for the qualities of simplicity and grace which it has nonchalantly thrown overboard.