LEASE OF LIFE (1954)

Modest, but not to a fault. One of those ‘well-lived/quiet life’ stories, a bit like GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS/’39, but with a country vicar rather than a teacher. An apt vehicle for CHIP’s star Robert Donat, returning to the screen after three years, heavily aged by the asthma that would finish him off after only one more film, THE INN OF SIXTH HAPPINESS/’58. But unlike his last role in THE MAGIC BOX/’51, he needn’t pass for a 20-something here. Instead, he’s dying from an irreversible heart condition, but going on just the same, especially for his daughter who’s up for a major music scholarship in London. How to make her living expenses provides the film with just enough of a dramatic engine to hang a little film on, as Donat’s prognosis unexpectedly frees rather than defeats him spiritually & intellectually, even as it costs him possible advancement within the church. There’s a bit of out-of-character drama involving a will, a cash inheritance and wife Kay Walsh’s sticky fingers, which seems forced to goose up the last act, but most of Eric Ambler’s screenplay rings true. Never more so than during Donat’s public epiphany delivering what was meant to be a sobersided sermon. Donat hadn’t attempted this sort of bravura piece since his famous Act One curtain speech in WINSLOW BOY/’48. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, using Eastman Colour after two TechniColor pics, makes a lovely thing of it, and director Charles Frend, just off his best film (THE CRUEL SEA/’55), knows not to press the delicate material. Touching and likable, if slow to get into gear; it only gets better as it goes along. 

READ ALL ABOUT IT: It’s another HEAR ALL ABOUT IT, this time for film composer Alan Rawsthorne who had Donat record his Concert Piece for Speaker and Orchestra PRACTICAL CATS the same year. It sets six of the famous T.S. Eliot poems (the ones Andrew Lloyd Weber turned into CATS) as a rhythmic tour-de-force for Donat, somewhat in the style of William Walton’s FACADE. Find it on SPOTIFY under Robert Donat.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, still very effective, with Donat getting his Oscar over Clark Gable in GONE WITH THE WIND.