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At last! The Cure for Love

10 Sep

At long last, Robert Donat’s beloved film, The Cure for Love has emerged from the shadows. For many years, it has not been possible to watch it, aside from a screening of a damaged nitrate print by the BFI in 2005. Happily, it has recently been shown by Talking Pictures TV (and is likely to come round again so do keep an eye on their schedule).

The Cure for Love is also available to watch via this link and if you need a physical copy, and with thanks to subscriber frontrowchris, it can be sourced from Vic’s Rare Films.

In 1945, Robert Donat appeared as Jack Hardacre in Walter Greenwood‘s play, The Cure for Love, at the Westminster Theatre. Also in the cast was Renee Asherson, who later became RD’s second wife. RD chose to take on the play as part of his tenure as actor-manager at the Westminster. A ‘northern comedy’ set in Lancashire and written by a Mancunian, it greatly appealed to RD who was himself a son of Manchester. Though the run of the play at the Westminster was not financially successful, RD began to think of it as a film venture in which he could achieve an ambition: to be director, producer, writer and star. To bring the film to fruition, RD funded it himself with his fee from The Winslow Boy, and in 1949 it was completed and screened. Though not a huge critical success, it was very popular with filmgoers, and, if comments on this website are indicative, it is very fondly remembered by those who saw it. RD revives his original Withington accent, and if you listen carefully you can hear hints of the stammer his more polished accent cured.

We would love to know what you think of the film: please do comment below.

Please visit https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/walter-greenwoods-creative-partnerships/ for more on Walter Greenwood and RD.

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The Ghost Goes West goes to Lancaster!

18 Feb

I’m delighted to let you know that a free screening of Robert Donat’s 1935 film The Ghost Goes West, directed by René Clair, is taking place on 22nd February at The Dukes, Lancaster. The screening will be introduced by Professor Jeffrey Richards, author of the wonderful book, The Age of the Dream Palace.

The screening is taking place as part of a series of public events linked to a research project, Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive.

Professor Annette Kuhn, one of the project researchers, tells me:

We chose The Ghost Goes West because of Donat’s Mancunian/Lancastrian connection and the popularity of the film at the time of its release—and since. At the venue there’ll be a display of relevant items from our archive and we’ll be serving drinks afterwards.

Contact The Dukes for further information, and to book your place.

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The Hitchcock Players: Robert Donat, The 39 Steps

1 Aug

by , Wednesday, 01 August 2012

Hitchcockian fall guy: Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, with Lucie Mannheim as “Miss Smith.”BFI

It’s always a thrill watching The 39 Steps’ Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) doing daredevil feats on the Flying Scotsman as it speeds across the Forth Bridge, kissing a Scottish crofter’s jealously guarded wife, and bringing down the house with an inane extemporized speech at a constituency meeting.

A passive ex-Canadian rancher in London, Hannay must extricate himself from a murder rap and expose a spy ring by revealing unexpected daring, physical agility, and mental resourcefulness. Wrongly suspected of murdering a Mata Hari type (Lucie Mannheim) he thought was a prostitute but had no interest in bedding, he undergoes a momentous change, partially while manhandling the blonde (Madeleine Carroll) to whom he has been handcuffed in mutual dislike. There’s a sexual charge to his roughness that the lady only half-heartedly complains about, while his wit and thoughtfulness – he helps her hang up her damp stockings on a hotel room mantelpiece – melts her icy disdain.

Robert Donat, who was 29 when filming began in January 1935, seized his moment, finding the right tone of virility and nonchalance without becoming a Bulldog Drummond or a proto-Bond. Saving his skin is his main concern, saving the nation (likely to be threatened by his adversary’s leaking of a military secret to a foreign power) of secondary importance. He is thus refreshingly unlike John Buchan’s Scots-born, pro-English South African colonial, a wealthy, anti-Semitic establishment figure who, over the course of the Hannay stories, winds up General Sir Richard Hannay, KCB, DSO, in which guise he was as much the deskbound Buchan’s alter ego as Philip Marlowe was Raymond Chandler’s.

Wrongly accused like Hannay are Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man and Cary Grant in North by Northwest, but as the Hitchcockian fall guy who falls upwards, Donat is peerless. Even the milkman admires him.

  • The 39 Steps screens at the BFI Southbank on Friday 3 August

Watch an excerpt

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© Graham Fuller, all rights reserved.

This article originally published at The Arts Desk and reproduced by kind permission of the author.

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