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Curtain Up - by Constellation Films, an independent company distributed by
Rank - was made in the autumn of 1951. Everything about the film, from the
simple plot to the amiable good-humour and witticisms, makes it hard to imagine
it existing in any other period in British film history. It is a curiously
anachronistic paean to provincial theatre, yet typifies the kind of escapist
comedy so prevalent in the early 1950s. Based on a play, 'On Monday Next', by
Philip King, the film inevitably gains from mobile camera work, multiple
locations and a familiar cast, but at its heart it is little more than filmed
theatre. Moreover, by becoming a piece of cinema, the self-reflectivity of the
play is completely lost. What remains is a series of jokes poking fun at the
vanity and disorganisation of semi-professional entertainers, which at times
feels lofty, if not hypocritical.
The film's narrow ambition, the gentle script with its sights set no further
than amusing farce, almost typifies the kind of anaemic British cinema so
vehemently criticised by the likes of Lindsay Anderson during the early 1950s.
Its middle-class world, set in a parish with spirited old ladies and bumbling
vicars, is concerned only with the kind of petty trivialities relevant to a
privileged few. As such, it reflects little of the changing Britain experienced
by the majority of early 1950s audiences.
This celebration of art for art's sake was the kind of cinematic indulgence
that would only prove tolerable for a few more years. British cinema was on the
brink of crisis and as the 1950s progressed, audiences decreased. Curtain Up,
despite the spectacle of Margaret Rutherford and Robert Morley scene-stealing
whenever possible, suffers from an apparent omission of an entire third act,
placing the film's accomplishments little beyond those it seeks to satirise. In
time, Curtain Up would most likely have been the fodder of television,
independent film companies finding greater success with more substantial and
harder hitting material. Comparing Curtain Up's provincial troupe to the
embittered amateurs of Room at the Top (d. Jack Clayton, 1959), it becomes
immediately apparent how British Cinema was changing.
Dylan Cave
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1. The staircase (3:00)
