Hombría

Wild Gainsborough melodrama adapted from the purple pen of Lady Eleanor Smith with marvellous camp performances from Dennis Price and Robert Helpmann. There is also an athletic performance from Stewart Granger, while Anne Crawford follows in the distinguished footsteps of Phyllis Calvert & Patricia Roc by offering us the blandest of leading ladies. Jean Kent, however, is on hand as a spirited travelling woman. Kent can't sing and she can't dance, but she certainly is a lot of fun, even if she does lay on the sex appeal with a trowel. Almost sixty years on it is easy to see why this series of melodramas were so popular. If you can leave your critical faculties to one side, this is one to enjoy.

Nostalgic visit to wartime British cinema for old timers - younger viewers will only see the corniness. All through, I was kept watching by set-ups that promised the effects that could have helped me buy this melodrama of romantic love (Granger, Crawford) seriously spiked by dastardly Price in Regency England and Carmen's Spain - but that, in the end, delivered a mixture of laughable action and turgid dialogue. Price's scenery-chewing performance is wonderfully over the top.

This is quite an entertaining melodrama than really belongs to the devious, cowardly Dennis Price as dodgy aristocrat "Sir Francis Castleton" who is out to steal the fair maiden "Oriana" (Anne Crawford) from her beau Stewart Granger ("Darrell") who is on a mission to return a valuable necklace to Spain. The plot has plenty going on, twists and turns, robbery, amnesia and betrayal - and luckily a bit of Jean Kent as the mischievous Gypsy "Rosal" who has a sultry quality (but who dances with two left feet). Crawford is fairly sterile as a heroine, the dialogue is a bit on the gloopy side and the staging at times too theatrical for the settings - but it is still an engaging team effort with plenty of comeuppances to be had at the end...

This movie, based on one of Eleanor Smith's books, is enjoyable, if you like love stories with adventure thrown in, and don't mind the couple not having a lot of onscreen time together. As in quite a number of historical romance novels, the lovers are separated for a time, and get involved with other people, though they never stop loving each other.

I won't give too much away, just some basics. After aspiring author Richard Darrell (Stewart Granger) saves wealthy Don Carlos from robbers, they become acquainted, and Richard finds himself telling Don Carlos about both his career ambitions and his love for childhood sweetheart, Oriana Camperdene (Anne Crawford). He has a rival in Francis Castleton (Dennis Price), his childhood nemesis, whose money and social background are more in line with Oriana's. However, her heart belongs to Richard, though he wants to have more to offer her, and spent a year in London trying, unsuccessfully, to get his book published. Don Carlos offers to help him out, if Richard will deliver a valuable necklace (that once belonged to Queen Isabella) to Granada.

Francis, meanwhile, tries to change Oriana's mind about marrying Richard, telling her that her father, who recently passed away, had many debts which leave her penniless, whereas he has plenty of money, as well as a title and social position, things Richard can't offer her. When persuasion doesn't work, he resorts to other methods, that result in Oriana thinking Richard was dead, and turning to Francis in despair. She marries him, but their relationship is miserable, as she can't stand sharing his bed, and he becomes more controlling and abusive.

Richard, meanwhile, had lost his memory after a robbery attempt and got involved with Rosal, a gypsy girl (Jean Kent). When he regained his memory and read in a newspaper about Oriana's marriage to Francis, he believed she chose money and society over their love, and married Rosal on the rebound.

How they find their way back to each other, and what becomes of Francis and Rosal, I'll refrain from telling, so check out the movie, it's an entertaining way to pass the time.

Dashing Stewart Granger and sneering Dennis Price love the same blonde maiden from childhood. But Granger ends up wounded with amnesia in a gypsy CARAVAN and linked to a flamenco dancing hot momma. And the blonde maiden is hooked up to dastardly Dennis. Will prim blonde maiden and dashing Stewart end up together, even though there are several countries between them, or will true love fail to triumph?

Most of the mid-40s Gainsborough Gothic romances I've seen have some slight restraint which labels them as British. Sure, there is villainy a-plenty, and firm jawed heroism from Granger and others. But, things don't really get silly. (Well, maybe in Uncle Silas, but that movie really is sui generis).

Well, here, nobody is really taking this thing seriously. Dennis Price, in particular, seems inspired by Tod Slaughter (but with one bout of demonic laughing, alas), as he marries our heroine, and then subjects her immediately to a variety of over the top indignities. The gal playing the hot blooded, flamenco dancing gypsy senorita also has amped up the hot blooded Latin thing to eleven, and is rather fun. The scriptwriter (and, I expect, the original "famous" novel) does not bother with trying to make much sense, and the film, heaven knows, may be better off for that. However, unceasing self-mockery is always a dangerous thing for a genre film, and it is a bit hard to care much about the goings on when the film's creators don't seem much invested in them.

Good for a laugh when Dennis Price is on screen, but Gainsborough did this sort of thing much better elsewhere.