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Sunday, February 23, 2020

LOYALTIES (1933)

Slightly stiff, but powerful adaptation of John Galsworthy’s play on anti-Semitism and the British ruling class, a big London & B’way success in the 1920s. With echoes of the Dreyfus Affair & MERCHANT OF VENICE not so far in the background, Galsworthy sets Basil Rathbone’s well-heeled, if barely accepted Jew amongst an upper-crust Christian throng at a posh estate for the weekend. But when a recently collected £1000 debt goes missing from his bedroom, Rathbone isn’t the type to sit back and play gentleman to avoid discomforting others. (BTW: £1000 = $5000, a very considerable sum in 1923.) Especially when he quickly figures out that Miles Mander, a fellow guest in financial crisis, is the thief. A libel action proceeds and ‘class’ closes ranks against the ‘Hebrew’ interloper. Galsworthy’s plotting can be a bit basic (a foreshadowing bet on an athletic feat; a last-minute discovery of a numbered £100 note), but the class conscious characterizations hold, even if many of the actors bring stage ticks along with them. (Alan Napier, as a Modern Major General who knows more than he lets on clears his throat every time he speaks.) Rathbone, also rather stage-bound, does get his effects across; and without softening his prideful, arrogant character. He definitely had Shylock in mind. A brave and unusual film for the period.

DOUBLE-BILL: Basil Dean directs in a choppy manner, seasoning with occasional visual flair to signify cinematic bona fides. (He’d steadily improve.) Too bad film editor Thorold Dickinson or Asst. Director Carol Reed (both master directors of the future) weren’t in charge. See Reed confront, and overcome, similar stage-to-screen issues on J. M. Priestley’s LABURNUM GROVE/’36.

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