THE LOVE LOTTERY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 784, 30 July 1954, Page 19

THE LOVE LOTTERY

(Rank-Ealing) B: making fun of film fans and the star system in a confection topped off with more than a dash of the sort of thing they like, The Love Lottery proves once again that it’s quite possible to eat your cake and have it, too. This film, which Charles Crichton directed, was first shown in New Zealand for the Queen. The other Royal Command film, you may remember, was The Million Pound Note, which I now feel, looking back, I rated more highly than it deserved. As a matter of fact, these films have quite a bit in common, and that may be why I feel more cautious about the way I praise this one. But undeniably it’s good fun. A fan-ridden film star (David Niven) gives up the hopeless quest for the quiet life and agrees to become first prize in a lottery~-which, says its chief promoter (Herbert Lom), will exploit, like so many other industries, the frustrations of women. Principally. concerned in capturing Mr. Niven for the promoters is their human calculating machine (Anne Vernon), which presently discovers it has a heart. If there had to be two Sexes, asks Mr. Niven at one stage, why in heaven’s name did one of them have to be women-and one can’t help feeling he has something there. The film: flows smoothly and, once well-started, is very easy to take. There is a large number of dream sequencesof fan-haunted hofror for Mr. Niven and starry-eyed expectation for Peggy Cummins (who has some tickets in the lottery)-some of which are very well done. Mr. Niven is right on top of his part, if that can be said of one so suitably bewildered; and as for Miss Vernon -this French actress has a roguish quality which is-a refreshing change from the movie industry's mass-pro-duced beauty, and I hope we shall see much more of her. (The few who have been lucky enough to see Edward and Caroline may remember she. was the wife in that film.) The script for The Love Lottery is By Harry Kurnitz, who also wrote The Man Between. That is a much better film, but not because of his script; and I think this comedy is probably much more his piece of cake. For me its most agreeable quality is its satire (who could resist the commercial, "a hot breakfast is twice as good as no breakfast at all?") even though, as I’ve ‘suggested, the film exploits to some extent the values it ridicules. What a pity that so much of it should melt away so Baiely in the mouth,