Carol Reed (1955)

It often seems an aberration but this is also an unusual and distressing picture, adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his own book.  Set in Petticoat Lane, the film is now recognised as ahead of its time in describing the racial variety of the local market stall holders and shopkeepers;  in fact this multicultural colouring is pretty superficial – more a matter of several regional accents (and a few incongruously posh voices) than of substantial ethnic distinctions.  The heart of the film is Jewish, its story propelled and its romantic-fatalist thoughts voiced by the infinitely benign tailor Kandinsky (David Kossoff, in a sincerely felt but fussily obvious performance).   The protagonist is a young boy Joe (Jonathan Ashmore), who misses his father – away in Africa for several years trying and failing to make his fortune.  Joe has had as pets a succession of day old chicks, which keep dying on him;  Kandinsky, at the same time that he advises Joe to get a dog instead, tells him about unicorns and their magical powers – that they’re now never seen in London but make their homes in Africa instead.  When he sees a kid goat with a single horn (the runt of the litter), Joe decides it’s a unicorn, buys it (in fact for three shillings and ninepence) and is convinced that it will make come true the wishes of all those closest to him.   In the end, some of the wishes do come true, others don’t.   (This echoes a ‘half the wish came true’ joke that’s used a couple of times in the course of the film.)   But the goat itself is weak:  it sickens and dies.   The story ends with Kandinsky, cradling the animal in his arms and singing a Yiddish lament, as he takes it to the pet cemetery where Joe’s chicks have gone before, in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral.   Kandinsky tells Joe that the unicorn couldn’t flourish in London and so has returned to Africa.   The boy’s clear-eyed understanding that he’ll never see the animal again is one of the best moments in the film.

The close of A Kid for Two Farthings is emotionally powerful but for what seems to be the wrong reasons.  It’s not only that the death of a loved pet animal is naturally upsetting:  the Jewish setting gives to this ‘scapegoat’ undertones that may or may not be intentional but which are as difficult to ignore as they’re hard to make sense of.   The goat has another kind of impact too:  in the days before no-animals-were-harmed reassurances in film credits, the kid doesn’t look happy being dragged along on a lead or passed from one pair of actor’s arms to another.    Jonathan Ashmore is appealing as Joe, although his alert intelligence doesn’t measure up to the unforgettable eccentricity of Bobby Henrey in The Fallen Idol.   Carol Reed is a fine director of children but what feel like attempts to recreate highlights of the earlier film don’t really have much weight here:  when Phil in The Fallen Idol tries to get the police to listen to him it’s dramatically powerful as well as affecting – Phil has information that could change the direction of the police investigation and the fate of the characters.   When Joe insists that his unicorn will work magic, there’s no irony in the fact that the adults ignore him.  Nevertheless, the frequent low-level camera shots make it clear that we’re seeing events from Joe’s point of view.  Reed also gets over a sense that each of the adults, as much as the child, is fastened on the realisation of a particular heart’s desire.

The acting is startlingly variable for a Carol Reed film – much of it is just bad.   Celia Johnson seems underused in the role of Joe’s mother but she does enough to stand out as in a different league from the rest of the cast.   Too much time is given over to a subplot about Sam, the local Adonis who dreams of being ‘Mr World’ (= Mr Universe) but is persuaded to take up wrestling – to try and earn the cash he needs to transform his years-long ‘engagement’ into something at least sealed with a ring.   Joe Robinson as Sam is evidently a body builder rather than an actor;   the ex-world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, as his professional wrestler rival, wins an acting contest on points only because he looks amusing – a cartoon of a malign giant.   As the patient fiancée, Diana Dors is at her most glamorous (this was Reed’s first colour film – Dors’s golden mane and the vivid blues of her close-fitting costumes have a very weird Madonna-ish quality) but her East End accent sounds mid-Atlantic in a way that suggests she thinks she’s destined for bigger and better things in cinema.   Her acting isn’t incompetent but it’s mechanical; what she brings to the screen is nothing more than her looks.  (She therefore doesn’t stand comparison with Marilyn Monroe – although Dors is often referred to as Britain’s-answer-to-Monroe, and this is acknowledged in a line in A Kid For Two Farthings spoken by a bitchy bottle-blonde rival for Sam’s affections.)    There are overemphatic performances from Brenda de Banzie, Vera Day (as Dors’s rival) and most of the wrestling hall retinue.  The more relaxed professionalism of Cockney character dependables like Irene Handl, Sid James and Sydney Tafler comes as a relief.

17 September 2006