SARABAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 553, 27 January 1950, Page 14

SARABAND

| (Rank-Ealing) ) HE cinema, which can be all ) things to all men-which can find stones in the running 'brooks, sermons in books, and | grist in everything-and which ‘last week presented us with its | version of Bonny Prince Charlie. and 'the Forty-Five, turns in Saraband to | the somewhat murky Konigsmark epi- | sode as if in an attempt to show that even the House of Hanover had its romantic interlude. In spite of Technicolor, it is not, I feel bound to record, an altogether successful experiment. In fact, if one may relapse into a colloquialism, it is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. The one-and-sixpennies, out for action and romance (both of them as violent as possible), will be irked by the sluggish pace of the story and bewildered by the convolutions of court intrigue. The cognoscenti will be irritated by, on the one hand, the film’s fidelity to the record in small and superficial things (the Hanover Fair sequence, for example, and the expedition to the Morea); .on the other by the over-sentimental picture it paints of Konigsmark and Sophie Dorothea. Those of us who sit in the middle rows, and who are not greatly concerned with ro-mance on the one hand or documentary fidelity on the other so long as the dramatic potentialities of a given situation are adequately realised, will be disappointed by the fumbling direction, the general weakness of characterisation, and the prosy and lack-lustre dialogue. In the dull Teutonic atmosphere of the | court of Hanover the affair of Sophie and Konigsmark is as effectively embalmed as a tinsel charm in a suet pudding. Of course, you can’t make a silk purse out of a suet pudding, but all the same, I wondered once or twice what Hollywood would have made of it, and how it would have seized the situation. Not, I would wager, with the little finger fastidiously retracted. There would. have been lustier lads and bustier lasses; the treatment would have been louder, more vulgar, and probably comic into the bar-gain-it might have contained a hundred howling errors, but at least it would not thave suffered from the negative virtues. As it is, a vague unease seems to pervade the whole show. The principal players seem unsure of themselves. Joan Greenwood (for whom I have a some- what uncritical partiality) is sad and ‘sweet to the point of insipidity. Mai Zetterling was originally cast for the part of Sophie; I understand, but her defection can scarcely have had the effect that Will Fyffe’s death is said to | have had on the Jacobites. There would have been more fire and action in the story if Sophie had been drawn as a Wicked Lady (and nearly as much true to history), but the character of Konigsmark should have been redrawn, tooand recast as well. Stewart Granger never once looked capable of playing

the "scamp of a lover," as Thackeray described him, even if the script had allowed. it. One or two of the supporting players (notably Peter Bull in the part of George-Louis, which fitted him like his own skin) might have done well had they had more scope, but most of the minor crises fizzed out like dud grenades. On the other hand, the climaxthe assassination of Konigsmark-was deftly done and well photographed; and probably as close to the historical truth as one could get. But it could scarcely make up for the uncertainty of the rest. The underlying cause of that uncertainty may be found in the shooting technique used. Set-up sketches were drawn for every shot in the script, and while this no doubt saved the studio a good deal of money, I rather fancy that it stalled the cameras and interrupted the rhythm of the action.