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...Magic Box (J. Arthur Rank; Mayer-Kingsley) is a lavish tribute to British cinema's pioneer William Friese-Greene (played by Robert Donat), who went without recognition during his lifetime, and died in poverty in 1921. The picture, a highly polished, occasionally over-reverent document that was made for last year's Festival of Britain, enlists many of the outstanding names in British films. It has some 70 stars, from Michael Redgrave to Emlyn Williams, in bit roles. It was produced by Ronald (Great Expectations') Neame, directed by John (Seven Days to Noon) Boulting, photographed in Technicolor...
...bumbling, Mr. Chips style, Donat plays the idealistic inventor with a good deal of warmth and wit. Best sequence: Friese-Greene excitedly demonstrating his newly perfected magic box by projecting flickering Hyde Park scenes in his laboratory in the dead of night to an audience of one: a stolid, bewildered London bobby, pungently played by Laurence Olivier...
...strictly a gamble with the weather man. If snow doesn't come to New England during the next two weeks the best bet appears to be Canada's Laurentians, north of Montreal. There is already a cover of about 14 to 18 inches on both Mont Tremblant and St. Donat and the lifts have been running for several weeks...
...offstage. In the play, the impossibly haughty barrister who wins the case was a rich treat of tasteful theatrical ham. But the grand-mannered role is so patently written to be played across footlights that, before the lifelike intimacy of the camera, even a technically flawless performance by Robert Donat fails to inspire belief. Usually an adept dramatic craftsman, Scripter Rattigan also runs up a debt to his audience that he never pays. The Winslow boy is finally cleared, but the movie fails to clear up the mystery of how such a volume of seemingly damning evidence came...
...Donat heads an exceptional English cast. As Sir Robert Morton, he plays the part of a famous English lawyer who sacrifices a high official appointment to publicize and petition the Winslow case against the Admiralty. His heartless questioning of the boy to discover guilt or innocence, his address in Commons denouncing the Admiralty, and his court-room defense are so convincing that they become the three high points of the movie...