FLESH AND BLOOD
(London Films-Anatole de Grunwald) ENIUS and the old Adam fight it out through three generations in Flesh and Blood, with a brilliant but wild young medical student, Charles Cameron (Richard Todd), his illegitimate daughter (Joan Greenwood) and her son (Richard Todd) as the evidence for the strength of heredity. Not knowing the James Bridie play which Mr, de Grunwald has adapted for the film, I was a little puzzled for a while by the pattern, Flesh and Blood isn’t a film of uniform quality, and it doesn’t flow as smoothly as it might, but the best of it lifts it, in my view, into & class above the average. Here and there a scene or
a passage of dialogue suggests the stage, yet on the whole the film escapes from the theatre very well. The most exciting camera work, which dramatically captures the atmosphere of a city in which plague has broken out, is certainly far from the -stage. Each of the stories told is quite different, though each contains violence of one kind or another. (It isn’t a film fot children.) The main story, which has the popular medicine-against-disease theme, is told in the last "act." The Cameron genius, at last getting its head above the primeval swamp (and, perversely, losing much of its humanity in doing so), is joined by the emancipated, pacifist daughter (Glynis Johns) of a muni"tions king. This part of the film builds up well to the dramatic fight against the plague. As the family doctor and guardian steering the Cameron clan as best he can through all its difficulties, André Morell gives an excellent performance. Richard Todd in his double role is the best I have seen him (I didn’t see The Hasty Heart), and Glynis Johns is the same sweet (though far from spiritless) lass we all liked in No Highway in the Sky. Joan Greenwood (the second Cameron) and George Cole (her secret lover) also deserve a mention, Anthony Kimmins (who made Mine Own Executioner) directed Flesh and Blood, with Otto Heller (The Last Days of Dolwyn, The Queen of Spades) as photographer. |
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 669, 2 May 1952, Page 19
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353FLESH AND BLOOD New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 669, 2 May 1952, Page 19
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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