(2 of 3)
Most illuminating are the shots made under the direction of brilliant, free-lance New Zealander Len Lye (Kill or Be Killed, Colour Box), which make up the bulk of the film. Lye's Dublin streets, obsessed faces and magical landscapes (made largely in bleak Galway) capture depths of mysticism which are beyond the reach of most words.
The White Cliffs of Dover (M.G.M.) is an exquisite cinematic equivalent of the late Alice Duer Miller's best-selling poem of that title — which, for all its sincerity, can be most kindly described as lap-doggerel. The picture, which is a 126-minute apostrophe to Beau Geste Britons and a Beau Geste Britain, may be most kindly described as somewhat pish and more than a little posh. It may well give genuine admirers of good cinema and credible Englishmen the jimjams.
It begins with a greying head nurse (Irene Dunne) waiting in a London hos pital for the return of her son from the disastrous Dieppe Commando raid. While she waits, the picture slips with a loud grinding of gears into the flashback that takes up most of the film.
In 1914 the head nurse is a broth of a girl named Susan (Miss Dunne again), accompanying her father, Hiram Porter Dunn (Frank Morgan), on a trip to England. Hiram, a 100% American, dis likes suet puddings, spends most of his time in England fighting over the War of 1812 with a 100% British Colonel (C. Aubrey Smith).
Susan spends her time being mad about English traditions. She leaps like a mating 'salmon when she hears the word "baronet." Then she bumps into one named Sir John Ashwood (Alan Marshal), complete with a family ghost. Sir John is eager to squire her Down Roman roads where Caesar's legions marched, And follow Chaucer's steps to Canterbury.
On midwar furlough in Dieppe, they hear the French townsfolk greet the U.S.
entry into World War I by singing The Star-Spangled Banner in faultless English.
After Sir John dies in battle, Susan brings up their son in England.
When World War II looms, Susan tries to take her son to the U.S. But on the boat train John II (Roddy McDowell) refuses to go. ("You durn little English man," wheezes his mother, with tearful pride.) So they stay. John flirts innocently (against Tennysonian landscapes) with a farmer's daughter until it is time for World War II. Then he joins a Commando.
Last scene: When John is brought in from Dieppe on a stretcher, his mother opens the hospital window so that he may hear the band music of the newly arrived U.S. troops. With fierce pride she describes them to her dying British son: "All the strong young boys, beautiful and proud with dreams. . . ." "God will never forgive us . . ,." adds Cinemactress Dunne, "if we break faith with our dead again."
Cobra Woman (Universal) is quite a funny picture to have been made in all seriousness.