The March Hare

"Hilariously funny!?!?"

I think the reviewers here are watching a different film or yet again remembering/viewing it with VERY rose tinted glasses.

Don't think I even smiled once, and boring. Mind you I'm not a fan of horse racing so that doesn't help.

The story of Sir Charles Hare - Terence Morgan - Irish baronet, horse-owner and gambler, who loses everything save one foal. This is trained by the eccentric Lazy Mangan, including a visit to the Queen of the Fairies... Charles is also in pursuit of a new 'filly' Pat Maguire, an American heiress.

Only mildly amusing, but with a sunny charm, this was a film for all the family, as they used to say. Others might cite it as typifying the bland and conservative fare served up by British studios for most of the Fifties. In CinemaScope, it is superbly photographed by Jack Hildyard in Eastman Colour, with likable characters, not least the always welcome Peggy Cummins' Pat, though she doesn't sound as if she's been anywhere near the U.S. Her father here, Canadian, MacDonald Parke, almost always played Americans in British films, most notably Doc in NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH. Terence Morgan seems more comfortable as the genial Sir Charles than he sometimes did in his more familiar role as a villain. Martita Hunt, much less imperious than usual, is fun as the kindly Lady Anne, but the best performance comes from Cyril Cusack, making the potentially irritating booze-and-blarney soaked Mangan, so engaging and amiable.

It is difficult to know what this film was supposed tobe.What it isn't is entertaining.The music is awful and overly intrusive.Fiscal seems to be doing a bad impersonation of Barry Fitzgerald.The only funny thing in this film are the cartoons in the title sequence.

Normally it took John Ford to make a film set in Ireland as phoney as this!

There must have been quite an audience for films about gee-gees for Eastmancolour (sic) and CinemaScope (beautifully shot by Jack Hildyard) to have been lavished upon this gallumphing nonsense so soon after Ealing Studios squandered Technicolor on 'The Rainbow Jacket'; complete with an excruciating 'Oirish' score by Philip Green. (At least horse racing and the wide screen make a good fit; although the final race meet is over surprisingly quickly.)

Stringer Davis plays a doctor in a rare appearance in a film without his wife Margaret Rutherford; while Charles Hawtry turns out to have only a very brief role indeed. Raymond Glendenning as himself sports his luxuriant real moustache while Reginald Beckwith also has a weird little one in his brief cameo as an insurance broker.

Peggy Cummins hardly looks a day older than in 'Green Grass of Wyoming' several years earlier; but sadly discards her trousers for party frocks (along, thankfully, with her American accent) after returning from finishing school. There's quite a bit a sex talk between her and Terence Morgan, but he's such a wet blanket it comes across as creepy rather than saucy...

I saw The March Hare at HOYTS Double Bay Theatre in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs during 1957 when in High School at Bondi, and recall it with fondness as very funny and quite entertaining. With Martita Hunt and other cast members of similar standing, the entertainment quality is obvious. Have been unable, over the years, to view it again as it seems to have disappeared completely. A pristine new widescreen (CinemaScope) DVD is well overdue, noting that the perennial Three Men In a Boat, also a British film, from the same year (1956) has just been remastered to DVD in England. Three Men has been aired on various TV Channels in Sydney many times, most recently on the ABC couple weeks back but The March Hare seems never to have been aired at all! Still waiting and hoping.

Eric Glasby