The Man Who Loved Redheads

This movie is a romantic comedy from beginning to end. It's a great little movie, based on a Terrence Rattigan play so you know you can't go wrong. The best part of it is seeing Moira Shearer in all four redhead roles. Besides being probably the best ballerina England ever produced, she's beautiful, brilliant, and really good at acting. This movie gives her a chance to display her comedic talents, including a knack for different accents. My favorite is Olga, the Russian ballerina. Moira Shearer herself said this was her favorite among the handful of movies she made, including 'The Red Shoes', one of the greatest movies of all time. The only reason I give this a 9 instead of a 10 is because it's no Red Shoes, but for what it is (romantic comedy, Bob the Moo)it is a perfect little gem. Another reason this movie should be made available on DVD is that it includes Moira Shearer dancing. As Olga she performs parts of 'The Sleeping Beauty', which she actually danced in real life as a member of the Sadler's Wells Ballet. There is precious little surviving video of her famous ballet roles, so this is really a treasure. It would be fantastic if British Lion Films or SOMEBODY put this on DVD so we wouldn't have to settle for home-recorded versions from TV.

This is a film based upon Terence Rattigan's play WHO IS SYLVIA, which in turn takes its title from both the original poem by William Shakespeare and its setting to music as a song by Schubert (a song with which my grandfather, a baritone, won much admiration). Rattigan also wrote the screenplay. This is definitely not one of Rattigan's happier moments. The film is ridiculously dated and corny, bordering on a travesty. The story is a simple one: the 'hero' played by John Justin fell in love at first sight at the age of 14 with a girl named Sylvia who had red hair and blue eyes, but he then lost contact with her. For the rest of his life he cheated on his wife and had a mews house in London for trysts with a succession of redheads who reminded him of Sylvia. Pretty silly, really. Harry Andrews plays a butler, Roland Culver has a jolly time playing a pal of Justin's who does the same sort of thing, though not with redheads, Denholm Elliott plays an earnest young son of the older Justin, and Kenneth More does a lively job of satirical narration (we do not see him). Gladys Cooper comes in towards the end with her usual assured style. It is Moira Shearer, seven years on from THE RED SHOES (1948), who plays all the redheads in succession, culminating in one who is a Russian ballet dancer named Olga. As Olga, we watch a great deal of Shearer dancing SLEEPING BEAUTY. Indeed, so much does the camera dwell on Shearer as a dancer, that one nearly forgets the film entirely. (By the way, the set and costume designs for that ballet production are simply appalling, quite a disaster.) This was the last feature film directed by Harold French, who by the way lived to be 100 and died in 1997. He made the excellent UNPUBLISHED STORY thirteen years earlier (1942, see my review). It is a pity that this film is based entirely upon wholly obsolete social codes of a bygone era, that its comedy is tepid, and that it is just not very good.

The theme of this film,namely a man who has an obsession about redheads was not very original when made.It was particularly common in the forties.Why even The life and death of Colonel Blimp has this as one of its narrative threads. I wonder if the narration by Kenneth More was in the script or added later.It certainlyvdoes little to add to this film.

The new title alone of this adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1950 West End hit 'Who is Sylvia?' made me think of Michael Powell; since it boasts Powell's protege Moira Shearer as four different redheads in the life of one man, compared to Deborah Kerr's three in 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (with which it also shares colour photography by Georges Périnal and the presence of Roland Culver, here repeating his role from Rattigan's play).

Sadly this particular soufflé gets little chance to rise under the leaden direction of Harold French, and John Justin is plainly no Roger Livesey. But there are odd moments as narrated by Kenneth More - particularly the brief shot of Sylvia near the end - that actually achieve the touching quality it aspires to and which 'Blimp' achieved throughout.

This film based on Terence Rattigan's play ' Who is Sylvia ? ' is for me a near total disaster. To begin with the dreadful, come on title should have retained the title of the play and the casting was misguided to say the least. Only in the final scenes of the film does Moira Shearer rise to any heights in acting, and the male lead John Justin never does. The majority of the film is virtually unwatchable as Shearer puts on embarrassing accents as both a ' working class ' woman, and then a Russian. Justin is wooden and they do not seem to have any chemistry at all, and to add to this pitiful first half the long ballet sequence added insult to cinematic imagery. Then in the last scenes Gladys Cooper brought the whole thing alive in a performance that had true resonance and beauty and the rest of the cast, as if by magic responded. Much as I admire Rattigan's work he is partly to blame by the patchy dialogue, and this is a pity because the play is a melancholy and tragic portrayal of the destruction of a life by giving all to idealized, romantic love.