User Reviews

I mentioned when reviewing THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP that David Low played no favorites with his cartoons. In the 1930s he attacked all the great dictators (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Stalin). He also found his reactionary Colonel useful to attack any other types of reactionaries. In 1941, after Churchill declared he would send aid to Communist Russian against their common enemy Germany, Russian hard liners screamed about trusting Imperial Britain. Low made a cartoon on this, with a Russian hardliner who was the Colonel, but now called "Blimpski".

Still the Anglo-Communist alliance was a difficult one to totally accept, even when one realized it's total necessity against Nazi barbarism. THE DEMI-PARADISE illustrates this problem. Laurence Olivier is a committed Communist Russian engineer, trying to perfect a torpedo for his nation's war effort. Stalin's government arranges to send Olivier to England to work with English naval experts to make his new form of gyroscope work.

The problem is that Olivier is totally suspicious of his hosts. He is a man in his early 30s, and he has been brought up to suspect that Britain (like Germany and Italy) is against the Soviet Union. After all, it was against the Soviet Union for decades. So the film follows as Olivier gets use to the vagaries of the British character he meets with in different English men and women. Gradually he learns to trust them but it takes quite a while.

The film has it's problems. Olivier prided himself on his abilities with accents, but in truth (seeing his movie and television performances today) when he plays English or American people he sounds realistic. When he tries foreign accents one cringes. He copies Albert Basserman (including shrugs) when he does Germans (or German Jews). His Russian engineer, at first, sounds realistic - but he also sounds slow witted. To be fair with Olivier his engineer is speaking a second language (but no Russian is heard in the film). He speaks definitively and slowly - and it gets to be a drag. A real Russian would have a faster clip to his words (unless, as I said, he was slow witted).

The best parts are the various British character actors, teaching the Russian visitor about the traditions and their importance to Britains. Olivier does point out some of them are silly (which occasionally the others agree). For example, there is a yearly "historic" pageant in the town, and Margaret Rutherford runs it. One of the highlights is a reenactment of the moment in late June 1815 when a coach arrived in the town announcing the battle of Waterloo. A bemused Felix Aylmer (the head of the local ship yard, and a host for Olivier) looks at this moment which he has seen for umpteen times before, and says out loud, "I wonder who won!" The film, as a morale booster, was good. As a reminder of a critical wartime problem (that fortunately was overcome long enough to defeat the Nazis) it is rather special.

What a shame that the Russian engineer should turn out to be so handsome and charming and,frankly,British in all but name and accent. He doesn't talk,he speechifies,whether it's taking afternoon tea or launching a ship. Actors are never happier than when hiding behind accents. Sir Laurence particularly favoured them - a bit like Meryl Streep. The difference was he couldn't quite pull them off as often as not. His Russian is all on one note. "Demi Paradise" is of course wartime propaganda when Russia was supposed to be our chum despite the Nazi - Soviet non- aggression pact which is conveniently forgotten . When one barking mad dictator double - crossed another barking mad dictator we were forced to make Hobson's Choice and cosy up to dear old Uncle Joe who subsequently turned out to have been Summa Cum Laude in the pantheon of murdering psychopaths. To ease our path through this moral maze "Demi - paradise" is somehow on a par with Fred Kite's "All them cornfields and singing in the evening". A selection of stereotyped Brits all fall for Larry's easy charm including the very posh heroine who joins the Wrens rather like lovelorn chaps once joined the Foreign Legion. 75 years on all this doesn't hold up too well,then again I doubt the makers ever expected to make a timeless masterpiece;just a journeyman quickie with a better cast than most. As Russian troops raped and looted their way round Berlin and Eastern Europe I would like to think Anatol de Grunwald might have been given food for thought.

What was a spoof of the paranoia of the Commie scare following World War II now seems somewhat hypocritical considering that for the most part, the Russians were our allies during the war. Films like "Song of Russia" and "Tender Comrade" were considered communist propaganda after the war ended, but during their initial releases, film audiences weren't any the wiser to the alleged hidden meanings and attempted manipulations of the politically vulnerable to switch their allegiances to the communist party.

Somehow missing on the list of alleged Communist propaganda films made during the war is this British drama which focuses on a Russian engineer (Laurence Olivier) who comes to a small town in England to get a ship built with the help of the local factory. Of course, there's the initial insecurities over what side the Russians appear on in the growing conflict, the differences in culture, and Olivier's feeling that he's automatically an outsider. He befriends a beautiful British girl (Penelope Dudley-Ward) who pretty much takes him under her wing and shows him that the British aren't as priggish or humorless as he was taught to believe. In fact, the whole town comes to take him into their hearts, their eccentricities proving to him that they are indeed people filled with heart, humor and passion.

There are speeches about how the British for the most part try to avoid conflict, how their on the surface stiff upper lip is really a facade they use as an inside joke against the world, and how as a community they do come together to fight for the basic rights of mankind. Olivier makes a speech towards the end of the film about how it takes a nation of humor (especially the ability to laugh at one's self) and compassion towards humanity will give the allies the side of right in the fight against an enemy who takes itself way too seriously. He isn't being facetious, pretentious and patronizing when he says this about members of a community who has adopted his Russian home town as their "sister city" but sincere and genuinely grateful for the way in which their friendship became stronger.

The wonderful Margaret Rutherford is delightful as the director of a local pageant, and it is clear why the world took her to their hearts as the British Marie Dressler. Mentions of Queen Elizabeth (the Queen mother, not the current queen) reminds the audience that this is a part of our recent history, even though it seems like so much time has gone by. It also serves an important reminder that people are representatives of themselves as individuals, not just the product of a country or nationality and that judgments are based upon people's character, not a different way of growing up or lifestyle.

It's difficult today to view this film as anything more than a curio and we have to assume that Talking Pictures - who actually screened it on television - had been negotiating/planning for several months or they wouldn't have screened something promoting harmony between Russia and the UK at the very moment that relations between the two countries are strained to say the least. Puffin Asquith never made a really bsd film throughout his long and distinguished career but he had his work cut out with this one. Saddled with the highly overrated Olivier Puffin was lucky inasmuch as the producers wheeled out some top-drawer support and a luminous leading lady in the shape of Penelope Dudley Ward, soon to become Mrs. Carol Reed and, alas, retire from the screen. Far too good for Olivier she shows how it should be done.

A satire of the English way of life in the first half of the 20th Century from the perspective of a Soviet engineer, this is a very enjoyable romantic comedy film. However, I have to admit that I enjoyed the light comedy of the first half of the film more than the rather openly propagandistic second half concerning the Second World War. I don't think that the two halves are married together as well as they could be. Given the time that the film was made, the use of propaganda is not surprising, let alone objectionable, but I preferred two other Laurence Olivier films which took a comparatively more subtle approach on that score: "That Hamilton Woman" and "Henry V" (1944). The film is well directed by Anthony Asquith and well written, particularly in the first hour, by the Russian-born Anatole de Grunwald, who likely used his own early experiences of English life as inspiration for some of the material.

The film stars my absolute favourite actor Laurence Olivier in a wonderful performance as Ivan Dimitrevitch Kouznetsoff from Ninji-Petrovsk - how do you do? Very well, thank you. His Russian accent is excellent and he does a great job in the early parts of conveying Ivan's struggles with the English language. Olivier had a flair for accents but he had a tendency of going a bit over the top when he used them in later films such as "The Boys from Brazil" and "Dracula" (1979). However, that was not the case here. Ivan comes to England with more than a few ill-informed prejudices. He believes that the English are degenerate capitalists who exploit the workers and have no interest in world affairs outside of their scepter'd isle. His conversation is very blunt and matter of fact and he has little understanding of English social niceties, meaning that he is occasionally rude without meaning to be. He interprets the English tendency to not say exactly what they mean as being two-faced and does not understand their sense of humour. I say "English" in all these cases as the film is a very specific examination of English life as opposed to British life. I had a bit of a problem with this during the World War II scenes in the film's more serious second half.

Over the course of the film, Ivan gradually falls in love with the socialite Ann Tisdall. The fact that her father and grandfather are involved in the shipbuilding company charged with making his new revolutionary propeller means that he has plenty of opportunities to spend time with her. Ann is played very well by the enchanting Penelope Dudley-Ward, who has great chemistry with Olivier. This was unfortunately one of Dudley-Ward's last films as she retired from acting in 1944 after a mere eleven film appearances. Ivan initially believes that Ann is a very nice person, which he tells her repeatedly, but he comes to consider her flighty and hypocritical when she backs out of a previous engagement to go to the theatre. In this sense, he was being superficial as he failed to realise that everyone has many sides to their character. He eventually comes to the conclusion that he has misjudged not only Ann but the English people as a whole. This is brought home to him in the second half when Britain is being bombed and facing German invasion. Like everyone else, Ann does her bit and becomes a WREN, leading Ivan to once again describe her as a very nice person.

The film also stars Olivier's frequent collaborator, the always superb Felix Aylmer, as Ann's grandfather Mr. Runalow, Britain's foremost expert in naval engineering and perhaps the most sensible and level- headed character in the film. Edie Martin is a laugh riot as Ann's aunt Winnie, who is extremely suspicious of Ivan. When she is told that he is showing something to Mr. Tisdall, she immediately asks if it ticks! There are also nice appearances in roles of varying size from Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell, Guy Middleton, Jack Watling, John Laurie, Miles Malleson, Wilfrid Hyde-White and an uncredited 18-year-old George Cole. The next year, Olivier cast Aylmer, Laurie and Cole in "Henry V", incidentally.

Aside from its entertainment value, the film is also of historical interest as it places a great deal of emphasis on the exaggerated strength of Anglo-Soviet relations. It is said more than once that the two countries have a great deal to learn from each other. In a very well written and delivered speech, Ivan hopes that the British Empire and the Soviet Union will be able to crush all enemies of freedom in the years after the war and then laugh at them as he believes that you must be free in order to laugh. De Grunwald clearly wanted his two countries to work together for the betterment of mankind. Needless to say, history had other ideas. It is hinted that Ivan and Ann will pursue a proper relationship after the war but real life might have stood in their way. The script certainly views the Soviet Union through rose-tinted glasses but this is understandable under the circumstances.

Overall, this is a very entertaining film but it is not as strong as it would have been if the lighter tone had been maintained throughout. However, I am very glad that the film was made as the idea would have few takers in either the film community or the general public in just a few short years.