malcp Review of Fuss Over Feathers

Fuss Over Feathers (1954)

Bland drama with a touch of comedy & romance but no surprises

[5/10 · 12 September 2015]

Perhaps akin to a somnambulistic cruise upon the Norfolk Broads, this film plods along and along and along. Kieron Moore looks occasionally agitated, Niall MacGinnis (Harry Tilney) raises his voice and John Gregson and Muriel Pavlow provide almost as much billing and cooing as the local wildlife. Glimpses of town life and the RAF base are perhaps highlights, but the plot and the dialogue is all so insipid that it's hard to maintain a great deal of interest in the developing "conflict". A rather over-strident score detracts further, particularly when it clashes with the soft, fluffy landscape of the wetlands which is generally captured (sadly) with all the grandeur and magnitude of those stock film-library shots of Africa they drop into Tarzan films. Perditor is apparently Latin for destroyer, which probably has some significance in the book, but the bird with that epithet seems the only real victim by the end of the film, for everyone else the message seems more like "ahh, but that's progress".