The best thing about The Kingfisher is that like Long Day's Journey Into Night it was made cinematically viable by taking the action outdoors in and around Rex Harrison's country estate. But The Kingfisher is hardly in the same league as Eugene O'Neill's classic.
Rex Harrison repeats the role he had on Broadway opposite Claudette Colbert. Although I would like to have seen Colbert on the screen, I've got no complaints about Wendy Hiller. Who in the English speaking world would have?
Harrison is a novelist who in his day was quite the lady's man and one of those ladies was Hiller. She's the one who got away and married another. Now she's coming to see him after burying her husband. Of course Harrison is almost giddy with anticipation or as giddy as one gets at his age having seen and done one and all.
The third part here is Cyril Cusack who is one delightful old butler who has been carrying on a decades old gay crush on his boss. Devotion doesn't quite describe what Cusack has done for Harrison although Rex can't quite recognize it.
The players are as classy a group as you can get and they help the film over the rough spots. After all it really is almost plot less and actionless, just a group of old codgers sitting around and talking.
But what talk.
Rex Harrison repeats the role he had on Broadway opposite Claudette Colbert. Although I would like to have seen Colbert on the screen, I've got no complaints about Wendy Hiller. Who in the English speaking world would have?
Harrison is a novelist who in his day was quite the lady's man and one of those ladies was Hiller. She's the one who got away and married another. Now she's coming to see him after burying her husband. Of course Harrison is almost giddy with anticipation or as giddy as one gets at his age having seen and done one and all.
The third part here is Cyril Cusack who is one delightful old butler who has been carrying on a decades old gay crush on his boss. Devotion doesn't quite describe what Cusack has done for Harrison although Rex can't quite recognize it.
The players are as classy a group as you can get and they help the film over the rough spots. After all it really is almost plot less and actionless, just a group of old codgers sitting around and talking.
But what talk.