21 DAYS

UK, 1940, 72 minutes, Black and white.
Vivien Leigh, Leslie Banks, Laurence Olivier, Francis L. Sullivan, Robert Newton.
Directed by Basil Dean.

An Alexander Korda production. It featured two attractive stars emerging in the thirties on the screen: Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. They were soon to go to America for Rebecca. Wuthering Heights and Gone With The Wind. They were also to marry. This film is interesting in showing them at the beginning of their screen careers - they also appeared together soon In Lady Hamilton.

However, the film itself is very creaky indeed and hard to sit through. It seems very artificial. Leslie Banks in the other star. The screenplay is by Graham Greene from a story by John Galsworthy - so the credentials from a literary point of view are very good indeed and worth viewing. A prominent lawyer, played by Leslie Banks, is ambitious to become a Justice. He is admired by his colleagues. However, he has a younger brother, played by Laurence Olivier, who has been in the African colonies. He is involved with a married refugee. By accident he kills the woman's husband. There is a cover-up of the killing, an accusation of a beggar who is an alcoholic clergyman who feels that he must atone (Greene material!). As the trial goes on the verdicts go against the accused. The brother and the girl have three weeks in which to be happy - especially after it is discovered that she is not truly married to the man who was killed. He had used her for his own purposes and had an older wife on the Continent.

The 21 days are the happiness of the couple together. At the end. Olivier goes to give himself up as the better thing to do. Ironically at that moment, the alcoholic clergyman dies. The heroine chases Olivier and stops him just in time - they have a future ahead of them. The synopsis reads somewhat better than the film itself. Vivien Leigh is certainly very charming and at ease on the screen. Olivier seems over stylised. The Galsworthy-Greene? issues are quite interesting but in the brevity of-the film and in the contrived scenes and stylised acting, they sometimes seem somewhat ludicrous. However, there are a great number of themes as truth and honesty. integrity, ambition, love. Worth a curiosity look and for some discussion about the styles of British film-making in the thirties.