It is almost 2020 and I wonder what a young audience would make of this film. There are so many bland super heroes who cannot act out there that I doubt if the language of film as portrayed here so miraculously would cross the border of time that divides us from 1951. How would they see the great cameo of Laurence Olivier's policeman ? In those few minutes he would have shown the audience back then Darcy and Heathcliff, and the beauty of his face and his subtlety in performance and his power of presence.How many would have heard of the truly greats like Margaret Johnston, Robert Donat and Eric Portman out of a list of so many others ?
I have seen this film twice and so much went into it and Donat's speech at the end has resonance for the barbaric way we have often used that magic box of illusion. I have slight reservations of the order of the narration, but it may have been too depressing to have followed a linear structure. The first half is harrowing and moving, and perhaps the optimism of 1951 would not have accepted it as an end. A film of great beauty and integrity.
Review of The Magic Box
