Michael Wilding

The Law and the Lady is the third film version of the venerable Frederick Lonsdale stage play The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Greer Garson follows in the footsteps of Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford as a beautiful confidence trickster, working in concert with a suave jewel thief (Michael Wilding). Jane Hoskins (Garson) inveigles herself into the household of San Francisco dowager Warton (Marjorie Main), where she and her accomplice intend to take their feisty hostess for everything she’s got. Thanks to censorial intervention, many of the sharper satirical edges of the Lonsdale original have been dulled by sentiment and pathos. Still, any film that offers Greer Garson as a not-so-nice lady is well worth having.Read More »

Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., in the New York Herald Tribune (1952):

Joan Crawford has another of her star-sized roles….Playing a musical comedy actress in the throes of rehearsal and in love with a blind pianist, she is vivid and irritable, volcanic and feminine. She dances; she pretends to sing; she graciously permits her wide mouth and snappish eyes to be photographed in Technicolor….Here is Joan Crawford all over the screen, in command, in love and in color, a real movie star in what amounts to a carefully produced one-woman show. Miss Crawford’s acting is sheer and colorful as a painted arrow, aimed straight at the sensibilities of her particular fans.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Of the many films (English and American) bearing the title Carnival, only one was based on the Compton MacKenzie novel of the same name. This 1946 melodrama stars Sally Gray as a 19th century ballet dancer who makes an unfortunate career move by marrying a taciturn Cornish farmer (Bernard Miles). Sally soon longs for the bright lights of the big city, and for the arms of her artist lover (Michael Wilding). Her husband is all too aware of this; and when the lover comes calling to renew the affair, the husband shoots Gray to death. The first film version of Compton MacKenzie’s Carnival was filmed in 1931 as Dance Pretty Lady. Read More »

Quote:
Although John Colton’s and Margaret Linden’s onscreen credit reads “by”, they had actually written an unproduced and unpublished play based on Helen Simpson’s novel. The novel was adapted for the screen by Hume Cronyn and was the basis for the screenplay. In this film, Alfred Hitchcock continued to experiment with long takes, a technique that he began in Rope, which was also adapted by Cronyn. Ingrid Bergman’s monologue, during which she relates the story of her marriage to “Flusky,” the subsequent shooting of her brother and their experiences in Australia, lasts nine and one-half minutes and was shot in one take.Read More »