All's Not Well With English Films

That the many English-made films exhibited in this country of late are, by and large, a superior product few would deny. That most are of a certain sameness which indicates a basic limitation in their conception is also increasingly evident. This disturbing alikeness, is, in fact, introversion, and together with the oft-cited virtues of English motion pictures, it can be observed clearly in the new Rank-produced film,, "Tawny Pipit."

In the best British film manner, "Tawny Pipit" assumes that it is the commonplace that is worth examining. The incident of a rare species of bird nesting in a small English village offers camera and actors an appropriate chance to reproduce quiet, minutely-scaled rural life pretty much as it exists. No one is seduced or murdered on a chrome-plated village green, and what action does occur has the look and sound of reality.

But the scheme of "Tawny Pipit,"--a continual harping upon the "old English virtues" of fair play and hospitality, and an incessant probing to reveal that English life is good and decent and superior--epitomizes the disturbing introversion in British cinema. Begin with "In Which We Serve," and recall "Brief Encounter," "Blithe Spirit," "The Years Between," "Stairway to Heaven," or "I Know Where I'm Going," and the same preoccupation with British life and people, British mores and traits, and above all British virtues evidences itself. Even the fine film "The Captive Heart" about prisoners of war in Germany, is really a study of British character under stress and strain with the usual fair play motive neatly interpolated.

The best British films, in short, have been very good, but they have been almost exclusively concerned with revealing English life and virtue. When they have strayed from familiar surroundings they have been occasionally successful as in 'Great Expectations," but more often they have not as witness "Cacsar and Cleopatra" "Men of Two Worlds," or the current "Beware of Pity." The same indictment cannot be applied to the fine picture that now and then rears up out of Hollywood's commercial quicksand. "The Informer," "Emile Zola," "Ninotchke," or "The Good Earth," support this view. American film makers have many times examined foreign cultures on an intelligent level, or have sounded American short-comings as in "The Grapes of Worth," with more than commercial success.

Whatever the causes of this English cinema introversion may be, and despite the "all that is British is good" results it leads to, it must be admitted that the films in question have been done in a highly literate vein. Bit it would be refreshing to see the same English film qualities of insight, subtlety, and pictorial honesty applied to non-English and perhaps less prejudiced fields now and then. Despite their quality, the same English faces and the same British virtues threaten to bore emotionally and intellectually.