Word: aylward
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...film is said to be based on the life of Gladys Aylward, an English missionary. But somehow, as tricked up and blooped out to fill the CinemaScope screen, the woman's simple story comes to seem rather like a Cecil B. DeMille version of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. The heroine (Bergman) is a London parlormaid who announces one day to her employer that "God wants me to go to China." The man is so startled that he lets himself be persuaded to help her get there, even though the regular missionary organizations have rejected...
...itself the story is strongly moving. The sacrifice of self for the sake of others is surely one of the profoundest experiences that human beings have attained, and it is not often that this experience has been so sharply dramatized as it is in the life of Gladys Aylward. Something of the woman's flame-simple, stone-actual spirit is unquestionably preserved in the film, but all too often the religious force of her example is prettily dissipated in the delusive grandeurs of the wide screen, and safely explained away in entertainingly heroic tropes and grossly commercial moments...
...Chris. Van Druten varies his comedy by introducing several characters who are affected by the growing Nazi power, then a cloud no bigger than a man's fist. As an earnest, worried Jewish girl, Louise Bell is excellent, though no better than Roger Klein as her suitor. Lilian Aylward plays a warm, tolerant, ignorant old landlady who for all her kindliness is a virulent anti-Semite. She is immense in every sense of the word...
...success of this play depends largely on the abilities of the actress who plays the medium, since she must be able to speak with the voices of three women, a child, and a man. Lillian Aylward is in every way equal to her assignment, and achieves the necessary effects by altering her speech rhythms. The six supporting players, particularly Michael Linenthal as a pompous doctor and Liam Clancy as a skeptical Oxford student, also turn in fine performances...
...chief peasant, Edward Chamberlain is sometimes interesting, and Royall Tyler, as his son, is similar but a bit more awkward. On the other hand, Lillian Aylward, as Chamberlain's God-fearing wife, uses forth-right gestures and voice to create a strong characterization. As Oona, Cathleen's foster-mother, Gail Kepner shows perfectly adequate control of a dull part, but her attention, understandably, often wanders away from it. Liam Clancy, who looks like a feckless young Irish poet, plays one, but with mere wistful lyricism; his voice lacks distinction as much as his spirit lacks life. Finally, the two devils...