LEASE OF LIFE

UK, 1954, 99 minutes, Colour.
Robert Donat, Kay Walsh, Denholm Elliott, Adrienne Corri, Walter Fitzgerald, Reginald Beckwith, Jean Anderson.
Directed by Charles Frend.

Lease of Life is an impressive religious film. It focuses on a typical small British village of the 1950s, a typical community with its small sins, centred on the Anglican church and parsonage. Robert Donat plays the parson, a kind man, limited, supported by his wife (Kay Walsh) and his daughter (Adrienne Corri).

When the parson discovers that he has a terminal illness, he decides to make sure all is well in the parish, within his family, enabling others to do good in the message of the Gospel.

The film was written by novelist Eric Ambler and directed by Charles Frend (Scott of the Antarctic, The Cruel Sea).

Robert Donat made an impact in British films in the 1930s with The Count of Monte Cristo and The Ghost Goes West, winning an Oscar for his sympathetic performance in Goodbye Mr Chips. Suffering from chronic asthma, he did not make many films – and his last film was The Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman four years after Lease of Life. Kay Walsh had made an impression in such films as Oliver Twist and Adrienne Corri was to have a long career (including the striking invasion and rape theme in A Clockwork Orange). The film is an early film for Denholm Elliott.

1. The significance of the title and its theme: life and vitality?

2. What was the main impact of the film: humanity, religion. the value of life, optimism? How convincing?

3. How typically English was the film? Why? Its presentation of people and places? The village and the city, the countryside and colour, the emotional conflicts, the background of village, school, Anglicanism? How interesting and convincing was this?

4. Could the film have been made anywhere but in England? Why? What are the main characteristics of this kind of English filmmaking?

5. How interesting and sympathetic a character was Will? Our first impression at his non-communication to the children, his life and vocation as a minister, his career as a minister, the fact that his past was fairly ineffective and uneventful? The nature of the family's poverty, their suffering? His role in the family, relationship with his wife, hopes for his daughter? His relationship with the people in the village? The grave digger, the ladies, his responsibilities? How good a man was he? The challenge of giving the school sermon? The challenge of his dying? The challenge of his wife's ambitions? The fact that he came alive?

6. The theme of death, and its relationship to life? Will's coming alive and the relief, of knowing he was to die? The sequence with the doctor, his helping the dying man and his selfish wife, the spontaneity of the sermon, his relationship with his wife and her knowing the truth? How well explored was this theme of death? The optimism inherent in Will's attitude?

7.How central was the sermon to the film? Its impact and content? Its results on himself. his family, the boys and their attention, the headmaster and the Dean and their reaction against it, the implications for his job, his being exploited by the paper and the sightseers, h assertion against the sightseers and its effectiveness?

8. How real a person was Vera? In herself,. in her relationship with her husband, supporting his work,. her ambitions for her daughter,. her scheming? Her supporting, the temptation to steal and her succumbing to it? Was the ending just? What had she learnt from her daughter and her husband? How valuable the lesson?

9. Was Susan an important character in the film? The presentation of her musical talent, her life with her mother and father, the poverty, the ambitions? Her character influenced by her father and mother? By her music teacher? The necessary move to independence?

10 How conventional a character was the music teacher? His support for Susan and his love for her?

11. The importance of Will's working for the dying man, warding off the greedy wife, the sequence at the graveside? The importance of these incidents as part of the plot?

12. The film's comment on the Anglican way of life and religion? Village parsons and their work? The Dean at the Cathedral? The discussion of chaplains and their appointments? The expectations of chaplains in a college etc?

13. Were the aspects of the stealing of the money too melodramatic for this film or did they fit in well?

14. What insight into religion did the film give?

15. How valuable an affirmation of life was the film?

16. Was the film typical of the 1950s? How?