THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1051, 16 October 1959, Page 21

THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO

(Romulus-Columbia) A Cert. HIS story of a blind deaf-mute-you may find in it superficial resemblances to Johnny Belinda or Mandyis on the whole a noticeably inferior production. But it has one or two redeeming features which go a little way to counterbalance the more blatant crudities of the script. Most redeeming is the performance of Heather Sears who, as an orphan under the tutelage of a philanthropic American (Joan Crawford), touchingly gropes her way back to life from an almost animal existence

in a squalid Irish village. It is perhaps indicative of this young actress’s capacity that she draws from the coldly elegant Miss Crawford a warmer and more convincing response-at least in the earlier sequences-than I would have believed possible. Regrettably, this doesn’t last, but by the time Miss C. has hardened into her customarily brittle format the film begins to take a new direction and develop as a satire on the charity fund-raising racket. The agreeable bite of this middle section, however, is in turn lost in a final wave of melodrama and downright bad taste, which left me at least with the feeling that whatever was sweet and pleasant had been pretty effectively polluted. David Miller directed and Robert Krasker (who appears to have been forced into some untypical banalities) was responsible for the photography.