Portrait of Clare

Having enjoyed great success a couple of years earlier in 'A Man About the House', Margaret Johnston starred in another adaptation of one of Francis Brett Young's massive novels, which this time crashed and burned at the box office taking Lance Comfort's career as an 'A' feature director with it.

Despite being as usual being set in a mansion the size of Hampton Court Palace, the frustrations gracefully suffered by Johnston during her long and not initially very happy life (such as the friction between her wilful young son and her stepfather, and the malevolent interference of monstrous mother-in-law Mary Clare) will doubtless still resonate today.

I believe, given the few films that truly gave her good roles that Margaret Johnston was one of the finest actors of the 20th C, and it is saddening that she left acting so soon, partly perhaps of the inferior roles she was often given. ' Portrait of Clare ' is certainly in the best category, and every time I see it, I enjoy it and along with the delightful ' Touch and Go ' I am impatient to see her and the films again. So why was she so excellent on the screen? Hard to define, but her timing is perfect, and she never faltered in giving a good performance even in material not worthy of her. She was beautiful, and one look of her eyes said more than pages of dialogue. A perfect example of acting with her eyes is in the last scene of ' Touch and Go. ' But to return to ' Portrait of Clare ' she is onscreen most of the time. The story is a little formulaic, examining the three loves in a woman's life and I will not relate the plot as it has been dealt with by other reviewers here quite adequately. The directing is good and so are the group of actors around her, and Jeremy Spenser is exceptionally good as her only child Stephen when he was a boy. It is a quiet film, and like ' Touch and Go ' does not depend on sensationalism that then and now feeds an audience's appetite. I believe we often cast our own needs upon what we see on film, rather than respecting what is actually there. A well-deserved ten.

This is a film of a type popular in the forties,the family saga.This film is not the best known of the genre but it is nevertheless quite good.Effective performances from the leads,particularly Robin Bailey.Now days he would have had the investigators in his office immediately. The DVD release is missing about 13 minutes from the original release.

This originally ran for ninety-eight minutes while the DVD, which is the same version that has been televised, only runs for around eighty-six. Even allowing for the slightly faster running time of PAL transmissions it suggests that some footage has been lost. As the film was initially criticized for being on the slow side, could it have been cut soon after its first showings? Grace Arnold and Robert Adair appear halfway down the cast but I did not notice either of them. There is a rather abrupt switch from Ralph's marriage to Clare, to Ralph meeting his sudden death, and I wonder if that is where cuts were made. Whatever, we are still left with a very enjoyable though slightly low-key romantic melodrama which stands repeated viewing. Margaret Johnston is very attractive and sympathetic as Clare, and first-rate character actor Robin Bailey is memorable as the dreary and priggish Dudley Wilburn. Also notable are Mary Clare as the parvenu Lady Hingston and Marjorie Fielding as Aunt Cathie. The music of Robert Schumann is gracefully utilized throughout. Adroitly directed by Lance Comfort, yet box-office failure led this to being his last 'A' picture, which seems rather unjust.

Portrait of Clare was the underrated British Director Lance Comfort's last A-movie and fared badly at the box office. In retrospect it is not difficult to see why: the UK critical tide at the time was running against melodrama, in which Comfort had scored his most notable successes in favour of realism, while the public taste had moved on in the interim. The film, too is not a complete success , although it copes reasonably well in reducing the original 900-page source novel to something manageable on screen. Today the cut-glass accents of many of the participants can be a distraction, while the central character neither suffers, or manipulates, enough to ignite the melodramatic tension such a story demands. Having said that it is still a good watch, and representing as it does the watershed in Comfort's career (after the poor success of this he was largely to work in lower-budget films, of which he made 20 before his death in the early 60's) it is still required viewing for those like me interested in the career trajectory of this, still largely unsung, director. For some of the best of Comfort, check out DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS, GREAT DAY, HATTER'S CASTLE and BANG! YOU'RE DEAD, as well as the later erstwhile programmer TOMORROW AT TEN with its early performance by Robert Shaw.