Fun And Games At "Girls' School"

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 31, 13 January 1939, Page 16

Fun And Games At "Girls' School"

["Girts’ School." Columbia. Directed | by John Brahm. Starring Anne Shirley, Nan Grey. Break-up date: End of January.-] "ey ROM the feminine, point of | view ‘‘Girls’ School’ pre-: sents several interesting: angles; principally it gives a’ fine demonstration of just how cattish young ladies can be to each other. , From the masculine point of view, which probably doesn’t mat- 4 ter much, anyway, the picture is ° chiefly notable for its display of lush young womanhood. For "Girls’ School" is set, as the . title might suggest, in a superior \ educational establishment for’

young ladies. In it literally hundreds of comely, frilly, giggling young misses spend their days imbibing synthetic charm and their nights sighing over adolescent love affairs. Occasionally, of course, as all who know their "Young Woodley" will agree it must-it comes to more than that; and then there’s the very deuce to pay. Illicit Poetry THAT is what starts it all in this particular girls’ school. A lightheaded, blonde young thing whom you'll recognise as Nan Grey, stays out all night on the hockey-field. under the stars with a poetic young man who holds her hand and reads poetry to her. Yes, Nan was @ literary girl.

Returning. as the early morning sun is breaking through the dormitory windows, and the little birds are twittering in the trees + (poetic note) she is espied by a monitor who, after deciding not! to, finally tells teacher. This monitor, a subdued, mousey . lass who is Anne Shirley de glamourised for the occasion, is & scholarship girl, and is conse: quently snubbed by the snobs. She hates her job of monitor really, of. course, and only wants to be one of the girls. : Assorted Swains COMPLICATIONS come thick and’ fast. Naughty Nan is about to be expelled; her mother and father have. been summoned, but her mother and father have separated,’ and it would be just too, too dread-' ful if the other girls got to know. Anne, like a brick (girls’ school term), risks losing "her scholarship to see that the other girls don’t get to know. There’s a bunch of assorted swains in the background, the poet (Continued on next page)

SPEAKING CANDIDLY

' (Continued from Opposite Page) for Naughty Nan, a young plumber for Anne, and there’s also a repressed schoolteacher and.a flance (Ralph Bellamy) who won’t toe the mark, but does so wholeheartedly One moonlight night. Hard To Believe 'AN interesting enough little pfeture, "Girls’ School," sincerely and well done for the most part, though maybe the atmosphere is laid on with rather too heavy a touch. And it’s hard to believe that well-bred young females could be quite as nasty to each other as they are in "Girls’ School." However, it must be presumed that Columbia’s research department investigated that point, and found they can be,

In a low working-men’s hostel she photographs a dead-beat who turns out to be none other than a@ once well-known prosecuting attorney whose energy was responsible for having an innocent man hanged, and who, in a fit of remorse, threw up his. practice and filed to this low, working-men’s hostel to get away from it all. (The remorseful prosecuting attorney, by the way, is our old friend Otto Kruger.) Over-Exposed SERIES of more or less probable circumstances, which we need not elaborate here, serve to rehabilitate Mr. Kruger, and the rest of the film (and the really exciting part) is concerned with Miss Farrell’s efforts to expose a racketeer, the racketeer’s underling to

expose an indiscretion of Miss Farrell, and Miss Farrell’s romantic endeavours to expose the love she feels burns for her under the waistcoat of the rehabilitated Mr. Kru-ger-and which, incidentally, she heartily recipracates. In fact, it’s exposes, exposes all the way, and if | cared to be nasty I could say that it is overexposed and = under-developed, but that wouldn’t be fair, because it’s all pretty good fun. Technically Wrong QNE thing I am going to enlarge upon, however, and that is the need, in films like this, for directors to have their technical facis above reproach. In this instance I approached the scenes giving technical details of news-photo-graphy from the extremely critical viewpoint of an enthusiastic miniature camera fiend.

The crucial exposure in "Hxposed" hinges on Miss Farrell's ability to secure-at night--action shots of a. fast-moving assault, battery and. murder. Now, the camera she used had, at the fastest, an £.2 lens, and with @ super-express-speed film she could never, in that light, have stopped the action and secured a reproducible print. -But Why Worry FIOWEVER, now that I have aired my knowledge of photography, I am quite prepared to admit that it doesn’t really matter a heot, and that it is possible to spoil a good ship through being too particular about a ha’porth of tar. Glenda Farrell and Otto Kruger do well, and there’s an excellent little cameo from Herbert Mun-

din.

J.G.

M.