Two from Britain

The Pickwick Papers (Renown; Mayer-Kingsley). The movies have already made 26 films based on Charles Dickens' works. This 27th, the first full-length picture made from The Pickwick Papers, is a nimble scamper through that intricate and delightfully interminable literary labyrinth.

Most of the book's main characters are intact--Messrs. Pickwick, Winkle, Tupman and Snodgrass, the indomitable Sam ("The world is wery full of willains") Weller, the scapegrace Jingle, Mr. Wardle ("Joe? Drat that boy! He's asleep again!"), Serjeant Buzfuz, Mrs. Bardell, the pettifogging Dodson & Fogg. Most of the main "adventures in the course of enlightenment" are related--Winkle's duel with Dr. Slammer ("Mr. Pickwick, do not obtain the assistance of several peace officers to take either me or Dr. Slammer into custody. I say do not."), the "gammoning" of Rachel Wardle, Mr. Pickwick caught prowling in a lady's chamber, Mr. Pickwick brought to court by a woman scorned, Mr. Pickwick cast in a debtor's prison.

The scenes rush by at almost too agitated a pace; the moviegoer, continuously aware that the vehicle is trying to beat the clock, may begin to feel like getting out to push. At 119 minutes, this might have been a much better movie than it is at 109. Yet the direction, by Noel Langley, has a real Dickensian rollick, and the acting is stylish, if not brilliant caricature. James Hayter is a dear old tub as Pickwick; Nigel Patrick, as Jingle, makes a properly swagger cheapJack; and Comedienne Joyce Grenfell, as Mrs. Leo Hunter, the aristocratic wreck who holds the "literahry fawncy-dress breakfast," positively improves on the book by revealing when she smiles a dental arch of the sort that no doubt inspired the design of London Bridge.

The Holly and the Ivy (London Films; Pacemaker), based on a recent Wynyard Browne hit play in London, has been called by one reviewer "the most deeply moving picture experience of this year"; by another: "earnest, sentimental, agreeably trumped-up, and resolved in a roseate flush." The contradictory opinions trace to a contradictory play. By raising ultimate questions, The Holly and the Ivy brings an audience to serious attention. By answering in church-door platitudes, it cheats expectation. Even so, the watchful urging-along of Director George More O'Ferrall and skillful stage business by a distinguished cast make so lively a charade of true feeling that quite often they inspire it.

The family of a widowed vicar (Ralph Richardson) comes home for Christmas. As the clergyman's children deck the halls with boughs of "that darn holly." prickly problems also strew the scene. One daughter (Celia Johnson), who feels it her duty to take care of father, really wants to get married and go to South America with her man (John Gregson). The other daughter (Margaret Leighton), though weary unto drink of her empty London life, refuses to come home and take care of father. She has had a child out of wedlock, and cannot face the "perpetual pretense" of living with a man who "can't be told the truth."

The actors wear their parts elegantly, though no seams are burst with original vitality. Celia Johnson is the perfect type of domestic devotion and self-sacrifice, right down to the incipient twitch of self-pity at the corner of the mouth. Denholm Elliott, as the rebellious son, tantrums and boozes vividly. Ralph Richardson, touching in several scenes, is too often merely a clever actor with face and hands.

Actor Richardson's failure, which is partly also a failure of the script, is crucial in the crucial scene. When the prodigal daughter at last takes up her troubles with the parson--where upon he mutters some consoling religious truisms and she is unaccountably convinced that he was a man of practical wisdom all along--the audience may be confused and dissatisfied. Is the parson, or is he not, the pious ostrich he seems (even to some extent in the final scene)? If not, how did all his children get the idea that he was?

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