Lease of Life

Was pleasantly surprised with this quaint vintage film. I found it quite engaging. Lots of period elements that seem so odd today like a benign impromptu sermon makes the national newspaper! A doctor who makes house calls! A drunken Church Sexton.

I saw Donat in Goodbye Mr Chips (1939) about 30 years ago and I was profoundly affected by the nobility of the character, and this is much the same. Cried my eyes out. Why were my teachers not like that!

So much emotion packed in to the morality play but wrapped up tight in quintessential English reserve, making it all the more lachrymose for moments.. the music assists... reminds me a bit like stiff upper lip Brief Encounter (1945) with Rachmaninoff at full blast.

A young Denham Elliott as a creepy music teacher!

So the parson is burdened by a miserable dodgy wife!

Theologically speaking, seemed mostly about virtue, what it looks like in Christian terms, you know self-sacrifice. The comfort of faith and death. .. A distaste for establishment defference and 'heaven' postponed - which I totally agree with, also perhaps a role for compromise and even subterfuge for the greater good for our character which the article in the New York Times described as Quixotic. Perhaps the Parson is not Mr. Chips, but he's a very upright fellow.