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.

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.

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 is a charming and delightful tale, told in languid fashion, of the life story of the character Clare Hingston (played by Margaret Johnston), as she relates it to her own granddaughter to tell her the importance of true love. It is based on a novel by the popular novelist Francis Brett Young (1884-1954). The tale is set in Yorkshire, and most of it takes place towards the end of the 19th century. Clare falls deeply in love with 'the love of her life' Ralph Hingston and marries him. But he drowns before the birth of their son, Stephen. This leads to years of lonely young widowhood, with Clare consoling herself by playing endless Brahms, Chopin, and Schumann on her piano, while young Stephen (excellently played by child actor Jeremy Spenser) grows up to become rather disturbed and difficult to handle. Clare's parents-in-law the Hingstons are nouveaux-riches who have made a fortune from 'trade', live in a gigantic house, and have obtained or bought a title. Lady Hingston, played by the fiery Mary Clare at full volume, is a monstrous harridan and arch-snob, giving Clare no end of hell over this and that, claiming 'my grandson' and constantly trying to take him to her house, and responsible for endless trouble and stress. Worn down by it all, the dreamy Clare (played with a rather tepid gentility and delicacy by Johnston, so that one wonders why any man would get excited about her, but then this was Victorian England I suppose) finally succumbs to the entreaties of her lawyer Dudley Wilburn (played very well by Robin Bailey, with obnoxious dignity) to marry him. She does not love him at all, but she does this 'to provide a father for Stephen' and also to act as a barrier to the horrible Lady Hingston. Big mistake! He turns out to be a nightmare as a husband, fastidious, tedious, petty, tyrannical, loveless, and he not only hates young Stephen but shows it. Eventually this drives the child to run away by jumping out of a window in a severe thunderstorm and nearly getting killed. So, faced with such an extreme situation, the couple finally decide to live apart. Meanwhile, Wilburn's handsome young cousin, also a lawyer, develops genuine sympathy and love for Clare. He is excellently played by a fresh-faced Richard Todd, whose first credited film roles were only the previous year. Todd and Clare acknowledge their love for one another but because people then didn't get divorced, they wait until Wilburn dies years later, before marrying and finding perfect happiness. Clare as an old lady tells this to her impetuous granddaughter (daughter of the now grown Stephen), who has lost the love of her life in the First World War and is about to throw herself into marriage with someone she doesn't love rather than wait and hope that she will one day find another soul-mate. The film is well directed by Lance Comfort, who died in 1966 aged only 58, having directed 44 films between 1942 and 1965, few if any of which are familiar or available today, having all seemingly dropped into the Black Hole of British cinema history from which there seems to be no DVD return. The British DVD market is too small, presumably, to make the revival of all these old films economical, in stark contrast to America, where there are so many cinema buffs that they will buy anything in sufficient quantities to make almost any reissue viable. The British TV channels do not like old movies either, so none of these films are ever seen even on television (again, in strong contrast to America). I obtained this film from a private collector. I notice that no one has ever reviewed it for IMDb before. Alas for old British movies!

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.