No Orchids for Miss Blandish
Film Reviews (Featuring Linden Travers, Jack La Rue, Hugh McDermott.)
With London at the moment divided between those queueing with eager anticipation at the Plaza and those clamouring with strident indignation for the removal of this film, it is difficult to make any moderate comments without being accused by the anticipators or the indignant of belonging to the opposite group.
For a beginning I can side wholeheartedly with the indignant by regretting that this film was ever made. When the quality of British films is rising and the demand for them abroad is growing, what folly to jeopardize that reputation with such a bad film. With money short and the expense of film making nearly prohibitive, what wicked waste to squander it on such a subject. There may be too a sense of wonder in those who have seen the spate of psychological films in the last year that a story in which motives and feelings are of importance could have been produced in such a crude and unsubtle form today. One has become a little tired of the film psychiatrist recently, but after a surfeit of revolvers, one began to long for his arrival.
Having unreservedly regretted that such a British film should ever have been made, it may perhaps be suggested that the outcry against it is unwise and possibly even a little exaggerated. If the film was made in the belief that safe box office returns would accrue from the repressed Englishman’s hankering to be shocked, then the outraged cries of the indignant are so much grist to the mill. I must admit that I have seen other films (mostly ” B ” ones, certainly) that contained the same sort of contents, but they died a natural death?the very fate that its opponents are keeping from No Orchids by the advertisement they give it. Whether the outcry is exaggerated or not may be debated, but I am inclined to doubt the harm that the film will do. Brutality and violence are certainly there in abundance, eight murders and one suicide besides indiscriminate killing. But if “sadistic” implies an enjoyment in brutality, then I think the adjective is wrongly applied here and the absence of that quality makes the film less dangerous. (In a way, the film of the concentration camp at Belsen, or a fine picture like the Italian Open City with its terrifying portrayal of the Gestapo’s delight in cruelty might rouse more dangerous feelings in the audience.) Then too, as well as being brutal, it is certainly vulgar but if it is the vulgar episodes that are to be censored, then the music halls and concert parties all over the country had better take care. There is a third way in which it seems to me that indignation has been exaggerated and defeated its purpose. Many of the criticisms imply that the film is full of horrifying sex incidents, but one may guess that the audience having been led to expect such enormity will come away disappointed. Rape in the novel has become romantic love in the film; the ” gangster chief ” love is the ” real thing ” and Miss Blandish never ceases to be refined?in the American slang of this British film, she remains throughout a ” classy dame “.
It will be interesting to see how long a run this tenthrate film has. Though misguided clamour has probably lengthened its life, the taste of the public will probably vindicate itself by proving that a film like No Orchids for Miss Blandish cannot rival the popularity of The Best Years of Our Lives.
P.E.W. Corridor of Mirrors. (Featuring Eric Portman and Edana Romney.)
This film is an outstanding example of pure celluloid in which the characters are entirely artificial and never come to life for a moment. It is suggested that the hero is pathological in that he prefers to live in the past rather than the present, but he is merely used as a peg on which to hang the story, and there is no attempt at any elaboration of his personality from the psycho-pathological point of view. The housekeeper is obviously mentally subnormal and her behaviour is predominantly dictated by her jealousy. This character could have been made interesting, but she is treated merely as a lay figure. What the film lacks in quality is made up for in the quantity of horrific situations, and it is unlikely that the film would have very much effect on any hardened film goer as it has very little emotional depth and relies entirely on the bizarre and its over elaborate scenic design for its effect.
D.M.O.
The film industry is one of the largest and most important in the world. It is the only art which the twentieth century has evolved, and it is the fault of the well meaning as well as of the commercial magnate, that what might have become, and may still become, an enormous socializing influence in the lives of the community, should have been allowed to degenerate into a racket. J. Macalister Brew. “In the Service of Youth.”
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