For the first Technicolor feature produced by his organization, Rank went to his WHV production arm; this was the group that did movies on sacred subjects. The subject was George Frideric Handel and how he came to write his MESSIAH.
The best part of this movie is the cinematography. Two men are credited: Claude Friese-Greene, who had more experience with color camera work than anyone else in Britain -- he and his father had developed Biocolor, which was never commercially successful. This turned out to be his last completed movie. His co-cinematographer was Jack Cardiff, whose painterly vision is very apparent here. The whole thing looks like a series of paintings from Handel's era. The music, being Handel's, is beautiful. The story, of how Handel (played by Wilfred Lawson), grown unfashionable, continues on, supported only by Elizabeth Allan as Mrs. Cibber and his faithful servant, played by Hay Petrie, is adequate to the task.
Were these the only considerations, this would be fine movie. Unfortunately, while Mr. Lawson's performance is great (he plays Handel as someone who has not quite grown used to speaking English; his language is that of the orchestra) and Hay Petrie speaks his lines as he always does, which is why he was such a successful character actor, the other performers talk as if they are amateurs reading their parts off the script for the first time. Given the long and successful careers of many of these performers, this is an annoying puzzlement.
A talking movie is more than pictures and score. The dialogue is the glue that holds the pieces together and tells the story. The failure here leaves the movie-goer looking at a beautiful and sometimes very interesting effort (when it is just Lawson and Petrie, or when Handel's music is being performed -- although none of the actors are very good at faking their playing of instruments -- but ridiculously dull at other moments. The result is a movie that is definitely worth watching, but not more than once.
