Lord J. Arthur Rank Movies
J. Arthur Rank -- later Lord Rank -- was less well known to the world than his rival, Alexander Korda, but he was the most important of that small fraternity of British film moguls, in terms of the filmmaking organization that he founded and the careers that he fostered. He started out as a flour magnate and a devout Methodist, who originally began producing movies in 1933 in order to to spread the gospel. By the end of the '30s, he had an interest in key centers of film production, distribution, and exhibition, and in less than a decade, his empire -- known as the Rank Organisation -- controlled half of the theaters in England, and the majority of the production facilities. Much more important than his business achievements, which were considerable, however, were the films whose production he fostered. Rank owned Gaumont British studios was the home to Alfred Hitchcock in the years prior to his departure for America, where he made his best British films -- more directly, Rank was responsible for organizing Independent Producers, the production company through which Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Laurence Olivier, David Lean, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and Carol Reed made their most important movies.During the mid-1940's, however, he over-extended his activities into America, at a time when U.S. theaters were filled to over-capacity with home-grown films, and the Rank Organisation was forced to retrench -- in the course of doing so, Rank lost virtually every major director/producer working under the umbrella of his company, and the company's releases were never the same. The Rank Organisation of the 1950's and 1960's was a shadow of its former glory -- it outlasted the man whose name it bore, and by the 1970's, with the company diversified into real estate and other activities, the filmmaking activities virtually ceased. In the 1980's, Rank became best known in video circles as the maker of the Rank Cintel, the standard device used for the transfer of film image to videotape. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
- 1956
Jill Day plays Mary in this frolicksome British comedy. While on vacation in Switzerland, Mary finds herself the object of several tourists' affection. Two of the men, Nigel Patrick and David Tomlinson, are British. The third, Leo McKern, is a wealthy, boorish Greek. Throughout the film, the actors remain vastly superior to their material. All for Mary was adapted from a play by Harold Beck and Kay Bannerman. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nigel Patrick, Kathleen Harrison, (more)
- 1949
Shortly after the end of World War II, a pair of British soldiers hold an increasingly hostile group if refugees in a German theater in preperation for returning them to their homelands. Confused by the seemingly constant struggle that still surrounds them despite the official declaration that the war has ended, the soldiers and their captives are briefly unified when word of a coming plague begins to spread. As time passes and the group remains, the British soldier's handle on the situation losens as their captives' momentarily placated hostility once again boils to the surface. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Dennis Price, Mai Zetterling, (more)
Bush Christmas can be described as an Australian western, albeit with a juvenile slant (indeed, it was produced on behalf of J. Arthur Rank's Children's Cinema Club). Set in the mountains of New South Wales, the story concerns a family of Australian kids who are heading homeward for the Christmas holidays. En route, they unwittingly provide the information which enables a band of thieves to steal their father's horses. Deciding to set things right on their own, the children head into the Blue Mountains to track down the thieves, relying on Aborginal survival skills to keep themselves going. The nominal star is the popular Chips Rafferty, playing a misleading likeable horse rustler. Though initially released in England in June of 1947, Bush Christmas has since become a TV Yuletide perennial throughout the English-speaking world. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Chips Rafferty, John Fernside, (more)
- 1946
George Bernard Shaw adapted his own play for the screen in this blithe film version of the romance between Caesar (Claude Rains) and Cleopatra (Vivien Leigh). Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra are merely Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle cast back into ancient times with Caesar doting with admiration and burgeoning love upon Cleopatra and expostulating, "You have been growing up since the Sphinx introduced us the other night." The story is a simple one concerning Caesar instructing Cleopatra on how to act like a queen. But Cleopatra is left cold by Caesar and his blatherings. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains, (more)
