Britannia Mews (1949)
Directed by Jean Negulesco

Film Review

The Forbidden Street, an adaptation of Margery Sharp's novel Britannia Mews, is as much distinguished by its eccentric casting as its exquisite production values.  Made by Twentieth Century Fox at Shepperton Studios, England, with funds frozen in Britain just after the war, the film has a character that is neither British nor American, something that confers on it an eerie nationless quality that allows it to get away with a plot that treads a fine line between mundanity and absurdity.  Just about everyone involved in the production, including its director and lead actors, regarded it as a disappointment, but its unusual conflation of old fashioned period melodrama and coy, unpredictably humorous rom-com is far from unappealing.  The things which, at the time of its production, must have seemed like errors of judgement are now what give the film its distinctive charm.

What a stroke of genius / folly / misguided economy (delete as you see fit) to cast Dana Andrews in a double role, playing two English characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to one another.  Andrews was, at the time, one of the American actors most closely associated with film noir, famous for playing amiable tough cookies in such films as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945).  So it was obvious he should being cast as a drunken English artist and puppet-loving lawyer in a weird Victorian melodrama.  Andrews was so up for the challenge presented by The Forbidden Street that he went to the trouble of perfecting an imitation of an English accent - wasted effort as it turned out, since his dialogue ended up being dubbed by an English actor for the British release of the film.

And who better to play alongside an American pretending to be an Englishman than Maureen O'Hara, the actress who had managed to pass her Irish brogue off as Welsh in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941)?  Never mind the fact that, as a girl, O'Hara's character in the film speaks with an upper crust English accent, and every member of her family also talks like a fully paid up member of the English aristocracy.  Explaining away such obvious anomalies as this is part of the fun of the film.  Spending your entire childhood, and then your whole adolescence, staring out of a window onto a slum alley obviously turns you Irish, as well as making all the men you fall in love with look alike, no matter how they talk.

In any event, the casting of Dana Andrews and Maureen O'Hara is pretty well irrelevant, as the real star of the film is Sybil Thorndike, a legendary thesp of the British stage who steals the show with her portrayal of what is possibly the most congenitally vile hag to grace a motion picture.  Dame Sybil's wart-encrusted Mrs Mounsey (affectionately referred to as 'The Sow') is in a league of her own when it comes to scene-stealing villainy, and you relish every moment that she is on screen.  No overblown caricature is this, but a grimly convincing depiction of depravity at its worst - an outbreak of bubonic plague in human form.  Another incomparable British diva, Fay Compton, has the less gratifying duty of playing O'Hara's mother (sans Irish accent), oddly paired off with Wilfrid Hyde-White (another casting choice that requires a lunar leap of the imagination).  An unknown British actor (Anthony Tancred, making his debut in a very short career) brings mirth aplenty as O'Hara's 'chinless wonder' brother - with a vocal inflection that betrays his membership of the peerage, and the brains to match, he would not be out of place in a P.G. Wodehouse novel.

And this is not to overlook the most important character in the film, the Victorian slum alley in which the entire narrative is located.  This was the creation of Andrej Andrejew, whose previous art direction credits included such inestimable films as Robert Wiene's Crime and Punishment (1923) and G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929).  The set has such a scale, depth and vitality that, even though it is entirely studio bound, it is as alive as any other character in the film, its character gradually changing (for the better) with the passing of time.  When we first enter Britannia Mews, it is indeed a place of morbid fascination, its aura of squalor and corruption felt in every shot.  Making the most of Andrejew's magnificent set, and giving it an odd mix of menace and fairytale mystique, is Georges Périnal's atmospheric photography.  Périnal had a distinguished career as a cinematographer, first in France when he worked on such films as Rene Clair's Sous les toits de Paris (1930) and Jean Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète (1932), and later in the UK on Zoltan Korda's The Four Feathers (1939) and Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).

Flawed as it is in many respects, The Forbidden Street makes up for most of its sins and is an engaging piece that delights with its intermittent moments of (mostly) serendipitous brilliance.  No sooner has Dame Sybil been kicked unceremoniously out of the frame than a collection of adorable French marionettes spring up and grab our attention (puppeteering being another skill that Dana Andrews appears to have acquired for the making of this film).  Much comedy is milked from Andrews and O'Hara's unusual sleeping arrangements (he seems to prefer the company of puppets), leading to a superb pay-off at the end of the film.  Director Jean Negulesco seems to have no idea whether he is directing a comedy, a melodrama or a pantomime, so he just lets each scene decide for itself which emotional chord to go for.  The result is a so-so film invigorated by a dose of charming anarchy, without which it could so well have ended up as drearily prosaic.

Film Synopsis

As a child, Adelaide Culver would gaze in fascination from her bedroom window at the slum alley Britannia Mews which ran behind her family's house in London.  When, as a young woman, she chooses to marry a penniless artist, Henry Lambert, against her family's wishes, she is forced to take up residence in the Mews.  The allure of marriage soon wears off when Henry, unable to find inspiration, takes to drink.  A row ends with Adelaide accidentally pushing her husband down a staircase, resulting in his death.  A wicked neighbour, Mrs Mousey, threatens to tell the police Adelaide deliberately killed her husband unless she remains in the Mews and pays her a regular allowance.  Some time later, Adelaide meets an unsuccessful young lawyer, Gilbert Lauderdale, who is the exact image of her former husband.  In return for chasing Mrs Mousey away, Adelaide invites Gilbert to live with her at her home in the Mews.  Despite their mutual attraction, the couple sleep in separate rooms because Gilbert is married to another woman, albeit one who left him many years ago.  Gilbert is delighted to discover a set of marionettes created by Henry Lambert and gives up his job as a lawyer to run what soon becomes a popular puppet theatre.  Just when everything is going well for Adelaide Gilbert's wife suddenly shows up on her doorstep...