Cinema: The New Pictures, Feb. 20, 1956

Lease of Life (Michael Balcon; I.F.E.) nearly puts its audience to sleep before shocking it awake with the chilling reminder that, in the midst of life, man is in death. Robert Donat is the grey, ineffectual vicar of a tiny parish in rural Yorkshire. His daily round is a dreary mixture of habit and frustrations. Carefully nurtured by his tweedy wife (Kay Walsh), pampered by his genteelly hoydenish daughter (Adrienne Corri), he has only one major problem: how to find enough money to pay for Adrienne's musical education in London.

While preparing one of...

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