|
The opening twenty minutes or so are a symphonic wonder, and a crystalline bedrock for Terence Davies. "There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone," thus arid reality made lush again via remembrance, a Welsh mining village through the prism of childhood. Dad (Donald Crisp) and brothers toil in the depths, scrub in the backyard, pray and eat—song, ritual, sacrament. Mum (Sara Allgood) is an emblem of humble courage, Sis (Maureen O'Hara) marries a wealthy suitor despite loving the penniless preacher (Walter Pidgeon). The runt of the litter (Roddy McDowall) bears impressionable witness. "This is not for you. You will have your time to come." Nostalgia rich like toffee and grainy like soot, composed by John Ford in waves of feeling. (Welles studied Stagecoach repeatedly before Citizen Kane, and surely did the same with this before The Magnificent Ambersons.) South Wales reconstructed on the Fox backlot, rows of houses along a sloping road crowned by Lowry smokestacks, as oneiric an invocation as Fellini's Cinecittà-Rimini (Amarcord). Birth and death, revolt and resignation, "well, give one and take the other." Quick with a song and ready to rally to the rescue, the community is also eager to shame a sinner or spread a rumor. The brutal first day of school, the ardent final sermon in church, a blind pugilist's justice. The virginal consciousness expanded by Latin and decimals must still wade through subterranean muck, the aged soul ascends from pit to celestial tower in his beloved's eyes. "Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold clear and bright the memory of men and women long since dead." The liturgical flow of Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs is the best tribute. Cinematography by Arthur C. Miller. With Anna Lee, Patric Knowles, John Loder, Barry Fitzgerald, Rhys Williams, Morton Lowry, Arthur Shields, Frederick Worlock, Richard Fraser, Evan S. Evans, Ethel Griffies, Lionel Pape, and Marten Lamont. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |