FORBIDDEN RAPTURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 794, 8 October 1954, Page 22

FORBIDDEN RAPTURE

(United Artists-Goldridge) F the advertisements are right in describing Forbidden Rapture as "The Continental production that may well (continued on next page)

rank as one of the Best Films of the Year!" I can only say I would need more than coffee and benzedrine to help me through the worst. A sculptor (Glenn Langan) fatls in love with a girl (Elsy Albiin), whom he supposes has inspired him to carve a piece called "Rapture." Actually he’s kidding himself-he has used her face but her sister’s body. The girl is emotionally unstable, and there’s hell to pay when the sculptor eventually meets the sister (Lorraine Miller) and, not knowing who she is, spends a night with her. Emotional instability isn’t a subject to make light of, and I tried hard to take a charitable view of Miss Albiin’s performance. Once or twice I thought it would come to life, but she spends far too much time mooning around looking agonised in the old silent film tradition. In repose she is very easy on the eye. In his own soppy way Mr. Langan is just as depressing. In fact, apart from one or two small part players, Miss Miller, in a rather stock sexy role, is the only one who doesn’t seem to be out of her depth. No doubt something could be done with some of the ideas in the story-the girl’s return to the castle tower which in childhood gave her a_ distant, unreal view of the world, for instance, or the division between carnal and _ spiritual love of which the statue is a symbolbut it would take more than the unit that made this film to do it. Forbidden Rapture has a director with an Italian name (Goffredo Alessandrini), and Miss Albiin is a Swede, but otherwise the credits, like the film as a whole, have a strong American flavour. If this is what happens when the nations get together I'm all for isolation. It’s a depressing thought that both this film and Anna, which I saw a fortnight ago, were shown in mid-town, first-run theatres,.while a little Italian masterpiece like Four Steps in the Clouds sneaked through on the fringes a few years ago almost unnoticed.