leslie howard – filmcentric

I do like a Powell and Pressburger film (here dividing their credited duties between director and screenwriter respectively), and ostensibly this is very much a wartime propaganda effort. That said, it does have its slyly subversive side, given that its protagonists are the escaped Nazis from a sunken U-boat (led by Eric Portman and Raymond Lovell) as they make their way across Canada towards the US border where they believe they will be met with freedom (thanks to America’s neutral position at this time). Not all the Nazis are bad guys, meaning there’s a bit of shading with the characterisation, but the core of the group are of course beyond salvation, hectoring the Hutterites they meet (led by Anton Walbrook) into supporting them, and burning books and stamping on modern art to make it clear where our sympathies should lie. That said, the predominance of the British accent meant it was some time before I even figured out who was supposed to playing the Germans; the alternative to that is provided by this very film also, though, and perhaps the plummy British accent for the Germans is preferable to whatever Laurence Olivier is doing with his voice as a French-Canadian trapper (claims to his acting greatness surely not based on this role).

FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Michael Powell; Writer Emeric Pressburger; Cinematographer Frederick Young; Starring Eric Portman, Raymond Lovell, Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard; Length 123 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Tuesday 1 December 2020.

George Bernard Shaw’s satirical play about the fragility of the English class system gets a fine adaptation here, with Leslie Howard (also the film’s co-director) portraying the mercurial and largely detestable Henry Higgins, and Wendy Hiller as his flower-girl muse, her Cockney accent rather patchy in the early portions of the film. There’s a prickly intensity to the relationship between the two, and it’s not exactly clear who ends up with whom at the film’s close (without giving anything away, there’s a hint that’s what’s seen may be imagined, or so it seems to me), but in the meantime there’s a feisty comedy of manners, as Higgins seeks to teach Eliza the King’s English, well enough to pass as aristocracy in the right kind of setting. And so, without quite meaning to, he essentially destroys her — or effectively tries to — by replacing her self-respect with the indignities of middle-class morality. It moves along at a fair clip with some jaunty editing (by David Lean, in an early film role for him) and the two leads trade barbs in a watchable and comedic manner.

FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Directors Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard; Writers George Bernard Shaw, W. P. Lipscomb, Cecil Lewis and Ian Dalrymple (based on the play by Shaw); Cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr.; Starring Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller; Length 96 minutes.

Seen on a train to London (DVD), Sunday 22 May 2016.