CONNECTING ROOMS

UK, 1969, 103 minutes, Colour.
Michael Redgrave, Bette Davis, Alexis Kanner, Kay Walsh, Leo Genn.
Directed by Franklin Collings.

Connecting Rooms is a little known film scarcely released and yet it is quite moving and worth seeing and discussing.

It is based on a play called "The Cellist", and the play structure shows at times. It also probably tries to do too much in its presentation of the worlds of the older and younger generations and their clashes. When it focuses on the stars and their personal inadequacies and loneliness, it is quite moving. Michael Redgrave does another performance of a failed schoolmaster, very reminiscent of The Browning Version. His speeches in this film are wonderful. Bette Davis, taking a rest from horrors and gore, reminds us of her talents in her portrayal of a cellist who is used by a callous young man on the make. Alexis Kanner plays this role. A Canadian, he appeared in Don Levy's interesting The Ernie Game, and a repelling British film called Goodbye Gemini.

1. The film was based on a play - was this obvious?

2. The film attempted to combine the 'mod' contemporary world with an old-fashioned British world and characters. Was it successful? Which sequences best illustrated this?

3. The boarding house looked like, and represented, an older style of life - how was this illustrated in the character of Mrs. Brent? How did the house, with its different floors and connecting rooms influence the characters?

4. What kind of man was James Wallraven? How did Michael Redgrave's performance communicate his character? Was he a sympathetic character? Pitiful? Why?

5. How did Wallraven's plight move the audience - his looking for work, loneliness, humiliations, obvious looking out of place, being discovered by Mickey, his despair and contemplation of suicide, his injury in the demonstration?

6. Was his revelation of himself to Wanda moving? Why? Was he treated unjust. by the school? (Was this illustrated by his application to his old friend, Dr. Norman, for work and his refusal?}. To what extent was he responsible for the boy's suicide? Should this have affected his life style as it did?

7. Wanda - what were your first impressions of her? Did you believe her stories about herself? Was she likeable, sympathetic? Why did she take Mickey as a 'protege'? Did she really see through him all the time? Why did she give him presents? How sad was his ignoring of her birthday? How lonely was she? How disillusioned was she with Mickey's abandoning of her? Was she wise to buy him the car? How sympathetic was she to Wallraven?

8. What did Wanda and Wallraven have in common? How important was his telling the truth for both of them? How significant was his discovering (and her admission) that Wanda played the cello for coins? What future did they have?

9. What kind of man was Mickey? How callous? Was he in any way sympathetic -to Jean, Mrs. Brent, using Wanda, using Claudia Fouchet, exposing Wallraven

10. The Claudia Fouchet episode - its place in the film? In itself?

11. Mrs. Brent as a character?

12. The success of the film as an entertaining parable about loneliness and ageing in our modern world?