THE FEMININE TOUCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 14

THE FEMININE TOUCH

(Rank-Ealing) G Cert. F you're planning a book on hospital life-and, if you have the know-how, a more or less normal confinement or appendectomy is good for five hundred pages of chatty reminiscence any day -there are two generally accepted modes of approach. You can take the high road of dedication and vocation along with George Sava, Morton (Not as a Stranger) Thompson, et al., or you can barge cheerfully along the low road with the authors of Doctor in the House, One Pair of Feet, Softly, Softly Tourniquet, etc., etc. Either route, with any luck, leads to the film studios, or at the very least to the digests and another carbolic soap opera. The Feminine Touch-made with the co-operation of Guy’s Hospital and based somewhat vaguely on A Lamp is Heavy, by Sheila MacKay Russell-seemed to me undecided whether to go all out for the mystique of nursing or the cheerier and more basic comedy of bunions and bedpans. If I suggest, therefore, that the director (Pat Jackson) has fallen between two stools you will (I trust) see what I mean. Of course I know that life is a mixture of high aspirations and low comedy, just as I know that all the clichés of situation, behaviour and re‘sponse which turn up in this story ‘Tepeat themselves endlessly in the lives of countless people. But clichés don’t make good entertainment and to achieve a lifelike mixture of comedy and drama demands more skill in the blending, and better integration, than has been achieved here. I suspect, however, that the casting department didn’t make Mr. Jackson’s task any easier. There are one or two quite good characterisations among the minor players-and Delphi Lawrence effectively suggests the toughness that some nurses seem to acquire. But Miss Belinda Lee, the principal player, never manages to look more than a glamour girl. And Guy’s and dolls of that sort just don’t mix at all.