Major Barbara
by Gabriel Pascal
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Product details
Actor: Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Robert Newton, Sybil Thorndike, Wendy HillerDirector: Gabriel Pascal
Cinematographer: Ronald Neame
Producer: Gabriel Pascal
Writer: Gabriel Pascal
Editor: Charles Frend
Writer: Anatole de Grunwald
Writer: George Bernard Shaw
Writer: Marjorie Deans
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 121 minutes
Release Date: 2000-06-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Homevision
Studio: Homevision
VHS Movie Reviews of Major Barbara
Movie Review: One of the most striking comedies of the British Golden Decade!
Summary: 5 Stars
Once more the irreverent vision of Georges Bernard Shaw, carves in relief with this story about a rich girl who decides to join the Salvation Army. Wendy Hiller one of my beloved "brides" of the screen makes a delightful and terrific performance in this satire of mistakes where she will discover the other side of the life.
Movie Review: Food for Thought
Summary: 5 Stars
A previous reviewer noted that the film was basically a platform to expound on George Bernard Shaw's views on munitions, war and other issues of the day, and rated it with one star.
I found that Shaw's social views, brilliantly elucidated by Robert Morley in a better acting performance than many of us have ever seen him in, are what make this a great film; whether you agree with them or, like Morley's estranged screen daughter Wendy Hiller in the title role, disagree, the dialogue is fascinating; the acting from Morley, Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Newton and a youthful Deborah Kerr, is first-rate; and the gritty London locales add greatly to the atmospheric ambience of the film. I hope the powers-that-be favor us with a DVD version of this great film soon.
Movie Review: Worth Watching For Cast Alone
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a hugh fan of Robert Newton, made famous as Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island. Seeing him in his younger days as would-be tough guy Bill Walker, was very interesting. You can clearly see glimpses of his future characters such as Long John Silver, Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist and so on. Having seen him mostly play rough guys it was aslo fun to see what a cutie his really is. The film isn't the greatest but I would definatly recommend see it despite critics pointing out its cinematic weaknesses and plot flaws. I am one of those people who simply watches a movie instead of analysizing the film to death, and it is worth watching.Movie Review: A perfect film of GB Shaw.
Summary: 1 Stars
When one watches a George Bernard Shaw play, one does not expect three-dimensional characters with social roles and inner lives. As the author puts it in a pompous forward to this film, 'Major Barbara' is a 'PARABLE' (his capitals), and the preaching never lets up. The title character (Wendy Hiller) is the daughter of a millionaire arms manufacturer (Robert Morley); she is a zealous Salvation Army officer, trying to convert the destitute of London with enthusiasm, sympathy and 'a bribe of bread'. She is seen one afternoon in mid-proselysation by Adolphus Cusins (Rex Harrison), an impoverished Classics scholar who determines to marry her. The stage is set for a typical Shavian problem play - you might subtitle the piece 'The Soul of Man Under Capitalism', with the religious fanatic and the urbane industrialist doing battle for the souls of the English working and middle classes. Barbara is tested by drama; Undershaft fights back with mind-numbing spectacle - capitalism's genius is that it absorbs all opposition. The loser is the audience. 'Barbara' is one of Shaw's less intolerable plays, with the odd funny line (all snatched by Marie Lohr as Barbara's aristocratic mother) peeping through the flat epigrams, laborious dailogues and general sterile clever-cleverness. The wonderful cast - Hiller saintly and sexy in military uniform; Harrison hysterically smart-*r*ed; Morley unflappably Machiavellian and Mephistophelean - do what they can, but they are playing Ideas, not Characters, and their attempts to blow life into cardboard only results in soggy paper. It's never nice being aggressively lectured to, and Shaw's grinding dialectic becomes less agreeable on the big screen - his use of old dramatic forms for non-dramatic purposes stops everything dead (although you can see how filming an ironic play about the armanents industry might have seemed radical during World War 2). The works isn't improved by Pascal's hapless filming (what can he do?), his style as clunky and grey as Shaw's sub-Wildean wit. There are some major talents behind the scenes, including David Lean as editor and William Walton as composer.
Summary of Major Barbara
Laced with ironic humor and social satire, this well-known classic film is the story of Barbara Undershaft, daughter of a wealthy munitions manufacturer and an ardent member of the Salvation Army. Filmed in war-torn England, Gabriel Pascal's screen translation of George Bernard Shaw's play is brilliantly directed and magnificently acted.Producer Gabriel Pascal brought the undiluted wit and wisdom of Bernard Shaw to world cinemas, and the world is grateful. But for all Shaw's philosophical irreverence and bracing ironies, as a screenwriter he had a lot to learn about structure and movement. Major Barbara made the transition to film less fluidly than Pygmalion (1938). Production took a year and a half. Pascal made himself director but left the real work to assistants Harold French (acting) and David Lean (visuals). The initial designer and cameraman had to be replaced, one actor died (Donald Calthrop), and oh yes, there were German air raids. Still, what a dream cast: Wendy Hiller as Salvation Army crusader Barbara; Robert Morley as her arch-fiend millionaire father Undershaft, preaching the gospel of money and munitions; Rex Harrison as Barbara's classics-professor suitor, Adolphus Cusins; plus Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams, Marie Lohr, and 18-year-old Deborah Kerr as sweet Jenny Hill. --Richard T. Jameson
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