CHANCE OF A LIFETIME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 764, 12 March 1954, Page 20

CHANCE OF A LIFETIME

(Pilgrim Pictures)

WENT to the Wellington preview of Chance of a Lifetime half expecting a one-sided lecture on industrial relations. The invitation assured me that the film would do much to counter any unrest and discontent among employees in pre-sent-day industry, and with more in the

same strain to sustain the i.00d at the theatre, my cigar had grown to quite Churchillian proportions by screening time. But it soon dissolved into thin air leaving not a whiff behind. Chance of a Lifetime is about four years old, but it was well worth waiting for. It tells what happens when the employees of a small implement works accept the challenge of the managing director (Basil Radford) and take his place. No-doubt it was meant to have a "message," and the management is shown to be indispensable. But this isn’t all that it shows-its picture of the workers’ efforts when they get their chance, and its "exposure" (if you like) of the way banks and steel mills throw spanners in the works because they don’t like workers’ control, could as well have been advertised in a Left Wing journal. I mention this not to grind an axe but as a mild protest against the idea that the film preaches at the proletariat. Someone has called it, fairly, ‘a miid and sensible essay" on employer-em-ployee relations; but quite apart from that it is a well-made, well-acted and above all, authentic film about life in a small factory. I’ve seen nothing more true-to-life than some of the shots-of the yard, for instance, with the men coming in on their bikes. Bernard Miles directed, took a leading part, and shared the script with Walter Greenwood-who, you may remember, wrote Love on the Dole.

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

(Ponti-De Laurentiis-Paramount)

j| HL NINTH COMMANDMENT, an Italian film directed by Clemente Fracassi about the love of two brothers for the same woman (Eleonora Rossi Drago), even after one of them has married her, began a new all-Continental policy at a Wellington theatre. A few of the early scenes lay on sex with a trowel, though one of these, among horses in a stable, has some real emotion in it for all that. Then it. settles down and I began to think it might turn out not badly, but I found the end melodramatic and quite unmoving. I say this with regret, because fdur people I know who saw it-all friends whose judgment I respect-were evenly divided for and against. It has some of the freshness of so many Continental films and interesting locations and photography. I suspect, too, it would be much improved if one could understand the Italian dialogue. But somehow, apart from a few love scenes and one or two others, it doesn’t catch fire.

LEX LINDSAY, who will conduct the National Orchestra of the NZBS in a studio concert to be broadcast from 2YC at 9.0 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16. The programme, planned by Mr. Lindsay, includes works by Walton, Vivaldi, Delius and Haydn. On Thursday, March 18, at 7.15 p.m., Alex Lindsay will be heard in "Review" from 4YC, giving the first of a series of talks -‘Suite in Six Movements" — about New Zealand professional musicians.