Displaying items by tag: Felix Aylmer
Man About the House, A
A MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE
UK, 1947, 99 minutes, Black-and-white.
Margaret Johnston, Dulcie Gray, Kieron Moore, Guy Middleton, Felix Aylmer.
Directed by Lesley Arliss.
A rather low-key melodrama based on a popular novel of the time by Francis Brett Young. This was the period in British cinema of Great Expectations, Black Narcissus. But there were also quite a number of colourful melodramas, sometimes based in Italy as was this one.
Two unmarried sisters run a school in London but receive a bequest from an uncle, a substantial income each year as well as a home in Italy, outside Naples. The sisters are played by Margaret Johnston (Australian-born, stage actress, in films from the 40s to 1968) and Dulcie Gray, with a long career in films. Introduced here is the Irish actor Kieron Moore, retiring from films in 1974, notable for his performances from Vronski with Vivien Leigh in the 1948 Anna Karenina. Guy Middleton and Felix Aylmer were regulars in many British films and these decades.
The film opens in a rather prim London, transfers to Italy, the older sister being very reserved and arrogant, the younger sister more enthusiastic. They encounter Salvatore, the manager of the estate. The older sister gradually mellows and falls in love, the younger sister observing but then falling in love with a doctor who visits. Salvatore is the life of the community, but the audience will at some stage begin to be suspicious, this confirmed, as he is poisoning his wife, resentful that his family which owned the estate has been taken over by the English.
A melodramatic and artificially staged fight between Salvatore and the doctor, the older sister recovering and never knowing her husband’s plans.
Certainly not to the taste and style of the 21st-century audience. Rather, more interesting as an example of British filmmaking in the postwar period.
