WHEREVER SHE GOES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 663, 21 March 1952, Page 19

WHEREVER SHE GOES

(Ealing) F a friend hadn’t suggested that I might be interested I probably wouldn’t have seen Wherever She Goes, an Australian film written, produced and directed by Michael §S. Gordon for Ealing Studios. I know good work has been done in Australia, but somehow this didn’t sound like more of it-a feeling, I’ve discovered, that other people have had. Even my ten-year-old son was very doubtful about it when I invited him to see it with me. Well, he followed the film with obvious enjoyment, and I must say I found it heart-warming.® Wherever She Goes tells the story of the childhood of the Australian-born pianist Eileen Joyce. I think we are won over from the start by the shots of young Eileen (Suzanne Parrett) racing her pet kangaroo, Twig, home through the Tasmanian bush. The action goes straight ahead through the ‘girl’s introduction to musie by a swagger-artist’s mouth-organ (there had been only bird calls before that), on to the first piano she has seen, in a Hobart shop, the voyage to Western Australia with her mother and small brother to join her hopeful (but rather hopeless) prospector father. No one but the crowd at the pub seemed to care about Eileen’s interest in music, They and the kind-hearted publican were really to make success possible. The young girl’s story is taken to the point where she leaves for Perth to continue her studies,-and for the last few minutes of the film Eileen Joyce herself is its star. This isn’t a film only for those who are interested in music. There’s some music in it, of course (in particular the Grieg piano concerto), but even if you’ve got no further than a comb and a piece of paper you'll swallow just as hard and smile just as helplessly at scenes like the one in which young Eileen discovers in her own home at Christmas the precious old piano from the pub which she thought she had lost. For this is one of those simple, moving stories that appeal to all of us, unless our hearts are quite hardened. With two of the principal characters children (and Suzanne Parrett is completely unspoilt), it can be especially recommended for young filmgoers. And of course you can’t gainsay the importance of the fact that the story told happens to be true. The. film matches the quality of the story. It isn’t a virtuoso piece, you understand, it’s not an epic, but in its own way it’s quite a little gem.