LEIF LARSEN Keeping alive was a wholetime job
(20th Century-Fox-CinemaScope) G Cert. OHN HUSTON-a director with some great films behind him-had almost everything that Michael Forlong lacked when he made this film. He had stars, and CinemaScope, and Technicolor, and stereophonic sound, and money, and the co-operation of the U.S. Marine Corps. He had also a story of quite monumental bad taste, Corporal Allison, U.S.M.C. (Robert Mitchum), sole survivor of a forlorn mission, drifts ashore on a South Sea island some time in 1944 to find, not the Japanese garrison he expected (they, arrive later), but a solitary (and beautiful) nun, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr). Now I don’t suggest for‘a moment that this kind of human situation-isolation, propinquity and a measure of mutual attraction ranged against the profound sanctions of religious dedication-could not properly be the subject of serious drama. But as it is treated here-as a kind of constant teasing excitement, served with a garnish of violence, elephantine humour and_cracker-barrel philosophising-it was (to me and I’m sure to many other people) grossly offensive. I don’t suppose Hollywood goes out of its way to offend its audience, but I have wondered before, and now wonder again, how it comes about that the likelihood of causing offence is not recognised. —
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570823.2.32.1.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 941, 23 August 1957, Page 21
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209LEIF LARSEN Keeping alive was a wholetime job New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 941, 23 August 1957, Page 21
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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