Word: mackendrick
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Director Alexander Mackendrick (Tight Little Island, A Boy Ten Feet Tall) has perfected the art of making small films immoderately successful. In High Wind, he shrewdly sugarcoats every point, spinning his 19th century yarn in such lively style that only discerning palates will pucker at the aftertaste. His subjects are the Thornton children, a quintet of improper Victorians who, along with two Creole friends, are packed off from Jamaica to be properly educated in England. En route they are inadvertently abducted when their ship is hijacked and they wander aboard the pirate vessel, manned by a dissolute captain (Anthony Quinn...
Director Alexander Mackendrick keeps a tight hold on the story, smoothly matching it to the rhythm and color of strange locales-from teeming river ports to the wild game country where Sammy spends one dark African night silhouetted in a treetop, loudly and desperately singing "Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?" But young McClelland projects courage without cuteness, and he is aided by consistently pungent dialogue. Forced to cope with the adult world, Sammy grows tough and wily, even puts on a bit, as when he embroiders details of his life at Port...
...Edwards does a fine job on scenery and lighting, and Alexander Mackendrick's directing seems adequate, although he must do something with the unfortunate Miss Holly and iron out the Prologue. But playwright Joseph has a lot of work...
...screenplay, by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman (who wrote the book), is for the most part brilliant, capturing the lingo perfectly: "What am I? a bowl of fruit? a tangerine that peels itself?" Or: "Starting today, you could play marbles with his eyeballs." And the pace of director Alexander Mackendrick keeps up with that of the music...
Director Alexander Mackendrick, who also had a hand in writing the script, is a master of nuances with the camera and in picking English types with an air of reality-harried bureaucrats, laboratory assistants who help themselves to a wee drop from a retort now and then, and other pungent touches. Particularly amusing is the chemical apparatus that serves as a running gag throughout the film. Also sprightly is Benjamin Frenkel's music...