THE GREEN SCARF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 26

THE GREEN SCARF

(London Films) [RE GREEN SCARF is the sort of ‘film I find very hard to write about. There’s much that’s good and moving in a story that must have been hard to tell, yet I came away vaguely disappointed. A bit patchy is, I think, the best way I can put it. First, though, the acting, and there’s no doubt about its quality: Michael Redgrave as a stick-in-the-mud old French lawyer pushed into taking his first case at the assizesthe defence of a blind, deaf and dumb man charged with murder; Kieron Moore -an incredible Kieron Moore (was this the man who played in A Man About the House?) as the accused; Leo Genn, at home for a change in a part that suits his curious lack of passion-a member of a religious order who has given his life to teaching such difficult folk as the accused; Ann Todd as the accused’s wife. The lawyer starts from scratch or a bit behind-for the accused insists he’s guilty and won’t co-operate, and his wife can’t be found. But he’s a dogged old dog and needs to be; and of course the thing

works out-in a slightly contrived way, perhaps, but net until some very dramatic moments have been sweated through. As a thriller it’s off-beat and, for one thing, has a compassion which I liked very much: the scene, for instance, when the accused as a small boy leaves his unloving home and his only playmate clutches at the heart. This is a film I'd have liked to like more than I did; and frankly I think most people will like it without ualification. George More O’Ferrall directed.