|
"Gone Over," reads the gravestone in The Edge of the World, thus a Technicolor pendant in the key of William Holman Hunt. Shropshire not quite yet in the twentieth-century, atavistic shenanigans on God's Little Mountain. The maiden (Jennifer Jones) runs barefoot with a book of charms and spells, Mum was a gypsy and Dad (Esmond Knight) makes coffins and plucks the harp, her closest companion is the fox in the hen house. "Seems the world's a big spring trap and us in it." The perfect heroine for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, in other words, such a figure of Celtic bewitchment that hounds instinctively growl at her. A song at the Sunday fair enchants the gentle minister (Cyril Cusack), a flower to be cherished at home is his romantic ideal. By contrast, the local squire (David Farrar) enjoys the hunt, watching the wedding erect astride his steed. "You'll not get another bite of that apple," bellows the choleric manservant (Hugh Griffith). Bushes manicured like swans, trees gnarled like wolves, a ferocious elemental thrust throughout. (The cinema is a young medium for primordial urges, magic lantern shows are a desired novelty.) A little joke (a portly fellow is not thankful at the congregation after not getting tartlets) points up the tremor of sensual appetites in a pious community, and there's the lass performing pagan rituals on The Devil's Chair, more inflamed than ever following her obligatory baptism. Green landscapes that set off rubicund skin, yellow windows that blaze in tandem with the feverish characters. Bourgeois household or wilderness pit, which is the deeper abyss? "Something strong, as driveth us all." Selznick's famed incomprehension is answered by comprehensive studies from fellow directors, from Hitchcock (Marnie) to Meyer (Vixen!) to Lean (Ryan's Daughter). Cinematography by Christopher Challis. With Sybil Thorndike, Edward Chapman, George Cole, Beatrice Varley, and Raymond Rollett.
--- Fernando F. Croce |