British Cinema - Renown Pictures Literary Classics
Collection
(Pickwick Papers (1952)/Svengali (1951)/Tom Brown’s School Days (1954)/VCI DVD)
Picture: C
Sound: C
Films/Extras: The Pickwick Papers: B-/D;Tom Brown's
Schooldays:
C/C-/Svengali: C+/B-
For a B-Movie fan or film aficionado of a certain
persuasion, this box set of three literary classic films is a cause for
rejoicing. For others, it contains the type of films one
reluctantly settles for when home sick from work and this TCM-type fare is all
there is to be had. In the later case, though it might just be a
vulnerable moment, there are some delightful surprises in store for those to
ill to grapple with the remote.
The films in the set have 3 unifying factors: Renown Pictures, the distributor
and producer George Minter, and director and screenwriter Noel Langley.
An extra on the Tom Brown's Schooldays
disc, "Richard Gordon Remembers
George Minter," sketches in the background on how Minter took over the
company while in receivership and transformed it into a successful distribution
company for mostly bad B-movie fare and serials. He soon, however, became
more ambitious and began producing a number of "literary classics,"
utilizing the distribution money to fund the production of higher quality
films. His biggest success was Scrooge
(1951) with Alastair Sims (released in the US as A Christmas Carol) and reviewed elsewhere on this site), arguably the finest,
certainly the most faithful, production of the Dickens' classic.
The audio interview (with excerpts of films running while the interview plays)
is valuable historically as little is known of Minter and his oft forgotten
films (N.B. It appears that the company has been restarted by another
entrepreneur who is following Minter's formula of redistributing the classics
while producing adventure films, TV series and "new exciting investigative
document- aries," about topics such as alien invasion, the Ark of the
Covenant, and the Bermuda Triangle).
The first film, The Pickwick Papers
(1952), produced to take advantage of the success of David Lean's recent
Dickens' pictures (Oliver Twist and Great Expectations) as well as Scrooge,
was an excellent choice for adaptation, as the original novel was episodic in
nature and allowed for a number of separate set pieces to carry along the
loosely stitched plot. As such, though a picaresque adventure it is a
character driven film, exploiting the Dickensian stereotypes with talented
British character actors to maximize the classic feel. Directed and
scripted by Noel Langley, whose most famous credit was as the screenwriter of
The Wizard of Oz (1939), this is fine family fare of the 50's variety, with
memorable performances by James Hayter as Pickwick and Nigel Patrick as the
"villainous" Mr. Jingle, along with a delightful turn by Hermoine
Gingold as Miss Tomkins. Once or twice, the film prosaically meanders
and in that doesn't stray far from the original. As an additional treat
for Anglophiles in general and Doctor Who fans in particular, watch for small
cameo by William Hartnell, the first incarnation of the beloved Doctor, as an
"irate cabman." Besides the usual bonus trailers, this disc
includes the odd addition of an actor reading the original dedication of the
book over a still image of same.
Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951), the
second film, written by Langley and directed by Gordon Parry, is perhaps the
most dated, suffering from the fact that it is a classic long superseded and no
longer widely read. The film has been restored, as the obligatory "before
and after" extra attests, yet somehow remains literally too dark. As
a coming of age cum boarding school tale it actually holds its own, with fine
performances by John Howard Davies as Tom and Robert Newton (Long John Silver
of Treasure Island) as the
benevolent headmaster, Dr. Arnold, who trys valiantly if in vain to reform the
19th century school's antiquated ways. The reuniting of these two actors
after the highly successful Oliver Twist, in which Davies played the title role
and Newton portrayed Bill Sikes, was an casting coup and
they gave it their collective best. The film is particularly effective in
portraying the brutality and oppressiveness of the British "public"
school system, with a spot-on study of the sadistic, horrific upperclassman
Flashman by John Forrest. Ultimately, the film is badly underminded by a
saccharine, religious ending, yet the power of what went before manages to grip
contemporary viewers. Interestingly enough, J. K. Rowling certainly knew
the power of a British boarding school yarn, Hogwarts being a version of Tom's
Rugby with magic. The disc is rounded out with the original trailer, as
well as the above mentioned interview, and a needless colorized version.
Svengali (1954) is an adaptation of
George Du Mauier's novel Trilby and a remake of the John Barrymore movie
version of 1931. By all accounts, the film was a troubled
production. Robert Newton, the star of Tom Brown's Schooldays, descending
into a near hopeless alcoholic state, walked away from the production, sailed
to America, and then on to Australia (where he reprised his role of Long John
Silver for television and died shortly thereafter), with process servers on his
tail the whole way for breech of contract. Langley as director and
producer Minter scrambled to find a replacement and had the good fortune to
land a Shakespearean actor by the name of Donald Wolfit (Lawrence of Arabia,
Becket) to step in the role and deliver a more than acceptable
performance. The film is frustrating in its potential, which is
underscored by the fact that the original Barrymore production is provided as
an extra on this disc. Langley takes the German expressionistic tone of
the black and white original and dials it up to 11. The set design
is very good, indeed, though the color is unfortunate, a garish, almost lurid,
AIP-style Technicolor. In the end the later is a
significant flaw, with the occasional overall wash every bit as bad as
colorization. Still, there are many fine touches here, particularly in
little details that enhance the overall message. The story itself becomes
a bit muddled because of the tamping down of Svengali's near supernatural power
over others, suffering in comparison to the early treatment and calling into
question the motivation in some of the key elements of the story.
Barrymore's
portrayal is Grand Guignol enough to be somewhat dated, so Wolfit himself
doesn't suffer much in comparison. The story, a sort of Bizarro version
of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion
(the play My Fair Lady was based on),
chronicles Svengali's obsessive hypnotic control of the
"free-spirited" Trilby, transmuting a woman who can barely sing into
an almost operatic star. Wolfit brings some Lugosi-style touches to
Svengali, not unfitting as his power of others is, indeed, akin to
Dracula. Ultimately, the Barrymore original is the more coherent film;
Trilby dies with Svengali in the first film and her revival in this remake
panders to a romantic sentiment that overwhelms the film and in the end feels
wrong. The addition of the original film brings an added value to the set
whether intended or not, and, though the original is hardly perfect, its dark,
downward spiral captures the spirit of obsession that is the opposite of real
love.
One annoying factor of this set overall is the inclusion of overlapping extras,
an unnecessary duplication from disc to disc of trailers and the Richard Gordon
interview. Of course, this allows the company to sell the same discs in
the set as they do singly and save with overall production costs, harking back
to the original mission of Renown Pictures: to save via recycling, many years
before it became fashionable.
On one hand, The Renown Pictures Literary Classics Collection is an important
part of the historical development of the English language B-Movie, in terms of
content, narration, execution, and cultural studies. On the other, beside
the true film buff and the errant English major or two, it is hard to imagine
an audience much beyond couch bound flu victims whose curiosity might nicely
dovetail with their ultimate cure: a nice, prolonged nap.
- Don Wentworth
