JACQUELINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 17

JACQUELINE

(Rank) G Cert. \JHEN you know nothing of a film ahd eéxpéct little it’s pleasant to be cheeréd up by its humanity or good humour, Jacqueline has both. Its big star, John Gregson, is a little dis-appointing-too decent to make credible even a cheerful drunk; but the rest compensate, and. Jacqueline Ryan especially (as Jacqueline) is a delight. Her vice is lying, full-blooded and romantic, ahd she’s completely credible. Belfast is the setting for this tale, which gets us from the start with Mr Gregson, a farm worker out of his element, having one of his dizzy turns high on some scaffolding in the shipyards. When the whistle blows he goes off to the pub. At home only Jacqueline, who has been lying about him all day at school, really forgives him, and in the end, with separation threatening, she’s to be the architect of salvation. Jacqueline is a tale of an ordinary working-class home with a troubled and warmly human life. The family pleasurés are a visit to a carnival and the street’s Coronati celebration -a wonderful affair with Cyril Cusack as a henpecked husband who satisfies a 20-year thirst and goes on dancing in a rainstorm that sends everyone else home. The dialogue, in which Liam O'Flaherty had a hand, is completely right. As Jacqueline’s mother Kathleen Ryan does a fine job in the sort of part she had in The Yellow Balloon, and Noel Purcell. makes a good parson, Only Jacqueline’s grandma, still pushing the barrow for the smug, steady fellow her daughter should have married, seems a little overdrawn, and even so it’s nice to see this little extra tilt at respectability. Don’t leave, by the way, till you know this film is over, for Jacqueline has a last word that will slay you.