Focus: A Film Review (1948-1949)

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88888888888 888888888888888 88888888888888 COVER PERSONALITY -■Af SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER VICTORIANS will debate with heat the respective merits of their stage I actors and ours. The name of Sir Henry Irving figures largely in such discussions. I make bold to suggest, basing my assertion on books and reminiscence, that the latest of the Knights of the Theatre would compare more than favourably with the first. Gramophone records enable us to gather something of the style and personality of the actors of the past. They do not convince one that Laurence has many superiors in the art and use of speech. His performance in Hamlet is a masterpiece of calculated effect. Films will provide the critics of the future with irrefutable evidence of his power and range. Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Max de Wynter in Rebecca, Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Lord Nelson in Lady Hamilton, the French Canadian in 49th Parallel, these are among the great performances of the screen. His Henry V remains as a criterion for future film productions. As we go to press, his Hamlet is exciting the critics and whetting the appetites of all who look for culture and distinction on the screen and value the impact of a truly artistic mind on the greatest, of the poets and playwrights. Laurence Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, in 1907. He was educated at St. Edward’s School, Oxford. His first appearance on the stage was at the age of fifteen when he played the part of Katharine in the Taming of the Shrew at a special boys' performance during the 1922 Shakespeare Festival at Stratfordon-Avon. After the performance, an old , lady congratulated him and predicted a future for him. She had a right to do so for her name was Ellen Terry. Birmingham Repertory and the London stage claimed his attentions during the next eight years, his parts being as varied as Lord Tennyson’s Harold and Noel Coward’s Private Lives. The production of Tennyson’s rather dreary Harold, is notable for the fact that the cast contained two obviously promising young actors. To quote Alan Dent: “One had a most telling and engaging sort of bluffness, he was Ralph Richardson, now Sir Ralph. The other was the arrestingly handsome youth who played the uninteresting Saxon Harold himself, smouldering, dark, compulsive, angular in movement, and with a voice with an edge on it like a Saxon battle axe. This was Laurence Olivier, at twenty-one, now Sir Laurence at forty.’’ He made his film debut in Germany and then went to Hollywood where he made a series of pictures, now almost forgotten: Westward Passage, Friends and Lovers and The Yellow Ticket. Back in England in 1935 he played in Moscow Nights, As You Like It (with Elizabeth Bergner) , Fire Over England and Divorce of Lady X. Hollywood again claimed him for four of his most memorable screen-parts. He returned to England to join the Fleet Air Arm, making, meanwljile 49th Parallel and Demi-Paradise. His experience during two long seasons at the Old Vic and other London theatres, in which he played Romeo, Mercutio, Sir Toby Belch, Henry V, Macbeth, Hamlet, Iago and Coriolanus, equipped him with the knowledge, background, depth and skill necessary for the production and direction of the two films with which his name as a film actor will always be connected. Henry V has been the cause of more genuine and fruitful controversy among film critics than any other film since the great days of the Russians and Germans established the canons of the art of film. That is a sign and measure of its importance. The experiments he has made in the production of Hamlet will leave their mark on films of the future. John Vincent. 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888