THE PASSIONATE STRANGER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 21

THE PASSIONATE STRANGER

(Beaconsfield-Lion-International) A Cert. INE man’s meat, as a witty French savant once observed, is another man’s poisson and no dish, I have myself discovered, can induce sharper or more immediate disagreement than comedy. If (like me) you are diverted by The Passionate Stranger, the odds are that Sailor Beware (see below) in which the humour is more blatant and basic will leave you limp with indifference. Or just limp. Not that I can claim to have enjoyed The Passionate Stranger unreservedlyY’ll come to the qualifications in a moment-but I was undeniably diverted by it, and the fact that I find myself remembering the best of it rather than the second-best is a circumstance not without significance. And one of the best things about this screenplay-by Muriel and Sydney Box (immutably fixed in my mind by Muir and Norden as Sidney Carton’s big brother)- is that it is original. An original screenplay, of course, is not good per se, but all good screenplays must have a_ significant measure of originality (film being a medium in its own right), and in comedy originality-being harder to come byis a lot more important than in other dramatic forms. . The passionate stranger of the title is a young Italian (Carlo Justini), who is engaged as chauffeur by a scientist, Ralph Richardson, and his novelist wife, Margaret Leighton. Miss L., who churns out light romances for a London publisher, and for whom all’s grist that comes to the mill, dashes off a torrid opus about the frustrated wife of a scientist who falls madly in love with her chauffeur-and, as luck will have it, young Carlo reads the manuscript and jumps to all sorts of superheated conclusions. An engaging device employed by Muriel Box (who directed) is ‘to inject this "inside story" into the film as a long full-colour passage enclosed by black-and-white sequences fore and aft. This treatment, by giving visual reinforcement to the tuppence-coloured sentiments of the novelette, serves to sharpen the satirical element in the comedy and to emphasise the quality of incongruity which underlines almost all humour, Where Muriel Box has erred-and erred substantially-is in making the

middle colour section much too long, and in allowing her story to encroach on emotional territory where comedy cannot in good taste be maintained. Cuckoldry is an old subject for humour, but to involve it with impotence-as she comes close to doing-isn’t funny. The final sequence in black-and-white-the deflation of the romantic Carlo-does much to neutralise the offensive moments and the film ends warmly and pleasantly, but it’s a fair comment, I think, that Muriel should have done better. Of course it’s true, as Chesterton said, that anything worth doing is worth doing badly, but better judgment might have closed the gap between promise and performance.