THE GREEN MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 939, 9 August 1957, Page 30

THE GREEN MAN

(Grenadier-British Lion) Y Cert, Death is so clean, Life-is so dirty; Life at 10.15, Death at 10.30... [IDEATH, it might be said, is no laughing matter. Indeed, a great many people, in the predominantly puritanical Anglo-Saxon world do say so, though I coubt if delicacy is the reason for it. Cross your fingers, touch wood, De mortuis, "Mocking’s catching’"-you can multiply almost ad infinitum the taboos we observe and the spells we use to exorcise the last enemy. We hardly ever dare to laugh at him, least of all in public. There are, therefore, few Harry Grahams; there has so far been, in the English cinema, at least, only one Kind Hearts and Coronets, and even there convention had the last laugh. The Green Man is scarcely as mordant as Kind Hearts-the successful homicices of the affable Mr Hawkins (Alastair Sim), which make a racy and, in more than one sense, quite a side-split-ting introduction to the story, come to us (as it were) at second hand, more as examples of emotion recollected in tranquillity than as events. And the enterprise to which Mr Hawkins is presently committed-the disintegration of the egregious Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley)-is, one suspects, compromised by social sanctions before it gets properly under way. But it’s pretty good fun all the etendi and just far enough from conventional comedy to have the spice of novelty. The notion of a vocational murderer (the film is based on the Launder-Gilliat play Meet a Body) may not be startlingly original, but Alistair Sim somehow contrives to make it appear so. He is, of course, a first-class comic, both actively and passively-that is, not only funny in himself but an initiator -of comedy (unlike Cecil Parker, for example, to whorn things simply happen). Indeed, the principal criticism I’d make of The Green Man (which was a verdant oasis in a week of indifferent film-

going) is that more of the fun wasn’t left in Mr Sim’s hands. The central plot, which provides for the unshuffling of Sir Gregory’s mortal coil (by the agency of radio and his amour-propre) at 10.30 the following evening in the lounge of the Green Man, has comic irony and a neat unity of time and theme. To add to this the talented dithering of George Cole was more than enough; to embroider the lét with cheesecake and bedroom farce seemed supererogatory. And, come to think of it, I'll wager this is the first time that epithet has been hung on Miss Jill Adams.