I AM A CAMERA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 869, 29 March 1956, Page 19

I AM A CAMERA

(Romulus) AM 4 camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking," wrote Christopher Isherwood on the first page of Goodbye to Berlin. Sally Bowles, to be sure (chapter two), shook his passivity a little. Only 19, English, with stage and screen ambitions, Sally sang in night clubs and, quite amoral, was forever-spending a night or two with. some "marvellous new lover." Chris was her friend and perhaps a little bit in love with her as well. From Paris and Rome came his last word of her: two postcards. Sally Bowles is an amusing, appealing story with more than a faint undertone of pathos. The Henry Cornelius film is an adaptation (by John Collier) of a play which John van Druten based on the Berlin. stories, but principally, I gather, on Sally. Some of the pathos, even a little of, Mr. Isherwood’s wonderful picture of pre+iditler Berlin, remains, but for the most, part 1 Am a Camera is a comic romp. For Julie Harris as Sally I have nothing but praise: the part might have been written for her. Laurence Harvey is a moderately successful Chris, though the script makes him out more negative than he need have been. Of the others Ron Randell is hardly the American-‘vague, wistful, a bit lost’-of the story, and Anton Diffring is a disappointing Fritz. Sally Bowles is a special favourite of mine, and I’m afraid I felt let down the moment I found that the film is a long flash-back from a meeting between Chris and Sally in the present; for with this device, which the contrived ending underlines, all the agreeable nostalgia of the last few lines of Mr. Isherwood’s Sally is lost. Sally herself remains an engaging figure, if a little less outspokenly amoral than the book made her; but there are many scenes from the story which I missed and would have much preferred to others that have been introduced — sometimes, I think, quite unjustifiably. Yet if I had never read. the stories or could ignore a long-stand-ing affection for them, I would probably find this film the best of entertainment. I am certain that many others will, and I assure you that for Julie Harris alone it is worth going a long way to see.