Appendix 1: Synopses of films
Claude Rains; Vivien Leigh; Cecil Parker; Stewart Granger; Flora
Robson; Stanley Holloway; Jean Simmons; Michael Rennie.
'An elaborate screen treatment of Bernard Shaw's comedy about
Caesar's years in Alexandria. Britain's most expensive film is
an absurd extravaganza for which the producer actually took sand
to Egypt in order to get the right colour. It has compensations
however in the sets, the colour, the performances and the witty
lines, though all its virtues are theatrical rather than
cinematic and the play is certainly not a major work.' Halliwell
1987.
Calamity Jane
David Butler, Warner, US 1953
Doris Day; Howard Keel; Allyn McClerie.
Musical set in the 19th century American west. Calamity Jane
(Day), dressed in her habitually scruffy buckskins, visits
Chicago to bring a star attraction to the Deadwood saloon. She
and Katie Brown (McLerie) become friends, then rivals and, after
Calamity has learned the vital skills of 'femininity', they are
re-united in a double wedding with their respective sweethearts.
The Captive Heart
Basil Dearden, Ealing, UK 1946.
Michael Redgrave; Jack Warner; Basil Radford; Mervyn Johns; Jimmy
Hanley; Gordon Jackson; Gladys Henson; Rachel Kempson; Karel
Stepanek.
The stories of several British prisoners of war before, during
and following their long imprisonment in a German camp, and in
particular of a Czech who impersonates a British officer in
correspondence with the latter's wife in UK with whom he is
eventually united.
Caravan
Arthur Crabtree, Gainsborough, UK 1946.
Stewart Granger; Anne Crawford; Jean Kent; Dennis Price.
Period melodrama set in England and Spain and following the
fortunes of the hero (Granger), his 'highborn' sweetheart
(Crawford), her villainous husband (Price) and the Spanish gipsy
(Kent) who nurses Granger after he is left for dead by Price's
agents.