NO PLACE FOR JENNIFER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 656, 1 February 1952, Page 18

NO PLACE FOR JENNIFER

(Associated British) HERE was no place for Jennifer (Janette Scott) because her parents (Beatrice Campbell and Leo Genn) divorced and remarried. Jennifer was a happy child spending a day with her friends, the Marshalls, looking forward to Christmas, her mother’s absence the only cloud in the sky. After she learns why there’s a good picture of her puzzlement at the end of so much happiness: "Daddy, couldn’t you ask Mummy to come home? .. . Do you mean we'll never be together again as long as: we. live?" Shocked when her father remarries, more shocked when she learns there is to be a baby, she is making progress again at a remedial school when her mother attempts to take her away to Paris. in a court action over her custody she hears that she may be called into court and flees into the London streets-a fine piece of work by actress, director (Henry Cass) and photographer (William McLeod), which reminded me of Edmund’s flight from Henning’s flat in Germany, Year Zero, In fact, I liked most of the following scenes, when Jennifer wanders in London before getting back to the Marshalls; and her attempt to escape from an old man who follows her is quite horrifying-so horrifying that I wondered ‘if this sequence was really necessary, Happily, all comes right in the end. I’ve seen a number of good child actors lately, and don’t hesitate to add Janette Scott to those worth going out of the way to see. I imagine her screen parents weren’t meant to appear particularly sensitive people, though they're not ill-intentioned. Anyway, I thought her performance (a bewildered child caught in a situation which she coald do nothing about, yet which must have seemed morstrous and unbelievable) easily the best in the film. A scene such as one in which she wakes after dreaming that her mother has telephoned, rushes to the phone, and sobs while the exchange asks what number she wants, was impressive. There was a_ pleasant surprise, too, in finding Brian Smith (of The Browning Version fame) in a small but important role as jennifer’s friend, Though this is not a deep study of divorce, it does give us the chance to share some of the feelings of one victim,