ALL FOR MARY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 916, 1 March 1957, Page 15

ALL FOR MARY

(Rank) G Cert. FARCE is so rarely my dish that I’m inclined to say it never is — that here’s one blind spot that all who read what I write should know about. All for Mary is hardly the film to trumpet forth as an exception, for in a livelier week this absurd piece of nonsense would have pretty brief mention; yet in its hit and miss way it gets through often enough to deserve a sort of decision on points. Off to the mountains for the holidays, strangefs on a plane as it were, are Nigel Patrick (you all know him) and David Tomlinson-he’s playing Humphrey Miller, a bit of a booby. At their Swiss hotel both fall heavily for the daughter of the house, Mary (Jill Day), who, in a fashion, is already spoken for by Gaston Nikopopoulos (Leo McKern),.

But what are they to do about it when they both get chickenpox and spend most of their holiday in the attic, their quarantine supervised by Humphrey’s ducky but firm old nurse (Kathleen Harrison)? With confusion most of the time for all three suitors, and the two patients behaving like children when the old nannie treats them so, this piece soon has the brakes right off. Yet somehow these experienced players and one or two others-Nicholas Phipps, for instance, as a general, another of nannie’s old boys, talking to her on a toll line from London--manage to distil some laughs from what on the face of it is pretty unpromising material. I think, though, that the film’s measure of success may be due less to skilled playing than to skilled direction. While it grieves me that Wendy Toye is not better occupied, I’m afraid this might be a very tedious piece but for her fresh, lively and thoroughly cinematic treatment. She even gets away with some bits of pure fantasy. In Wellington, by the way, most of the first half showing with this film was advertising of one kind or another, including a particularly boring visit to Finland stars of the Rank Organisation.