As many have noted, there is superb ensemble playing from a great cast of actors, headed by Sir Ralph Richardson.
I saw it on the TV recently and I just wanted to emphasise what a superb, literate and engaging script is on display by Anatole de Grunwald and its original playright Wynyward Browne.
Anatole de Grunwald was responsible for helping fashion Terence Rattigan's play Flare Path into another superb film 'the Way to the Stars' (1945).
These films may seem dated now but I think they have aged well, with the quality of their writing and their rich depth of feeling. Human frailty is on display but in an understanding, compassionate way and curiously simultaneously both elegant and raw way. They were succeeded, even superseded, by the 'kitchen sink' dramas of playwrights such as John Osborne in 'Look back in anger', and I suppose that was a necessary development, but I think and I hope there will always be a place for such dramatic gems on both stage and screen.
You really care about the characters in the piece, and yes, as one reviewer has said, one wishes it could be made into a series to see what happens to them all next!
Ralph Richardson's clergyman wondering about the continuing relevance of religion in people's lives is a theme just as relevant today as it was nearly seventy years ago when the film was released and will surely be so in another seventy years!
I saw it on the TV recently and I just wanted to emphasise what a superb, literate and engaging script is on display by Anatole de Grunwald and its original playright Wynyward Browne.
Anatole de Grunwald was responsible for helping fashion Terence Rattigan's play Flare Path into another superb film 'the Way to the Stars' (1945).
These films may seem dated now but I think they have aged well, with the quality of their writing and their rich depth of feeling. Human frailty is on display but in an understanding, compassionate way and curiously simultaneously both elegant and raw way. They were succeeded, even superseded, by the 'kitchen sink' dramas of playwrights such as John Osborne in 'Look back in anger', and I suppose that was a necessary development, but I think and I hope there will always be a place for such dramatic gems on both stage and screen.
You really care about the characters in the piece, and yes, as one reviewer has said, one wishes it could be made into a series to see what happens to them all next!
Ralph Richardson's clergyman wondering about the continuing relevance of religion in people's lives is a theme just as relevant today as it was nearly seventy years ago when the film was released and will surely be so in another seventy years!