I Am a Camera

 Posted on July 24, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  828 words  |  Aldo Pusey

John van Druten's hit play, based on The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, is an episodic affair dealing with a young author who gets himself involved, innocently, with a crackpot girl in pre-World War II Berlin. In transferring the play to the screen, scripter John Collier hewed close to the original in dialog and situations and the effect is always more that of a filmed stage play than a motion picture. The direction by Henry Cornelius follows the stage line, too, and the camera handling by Guy Green does not have the flowing freedom usual to most motion pictures.

John van Druten’s hit play, based on The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, is an episodic affair dealing with a young author who gets himself involved, innocently, with a crackpot girl in pre-World War II Berlin. In transferring the play to the screen, scripter John Collier hewed close to the original in dialog and situations and the effect is always more that of a filmed stage play than a motion picture. The direction by Henry Cornelius follows the stage line, too, and the camera handling by Guy Green does not have the flowing freedom usual to most motion pictures.

While not an all-together satisfactory film offering, Camera does have its moments. Most of them will probably be more appreciated by distaff viewers than male stub-holders. The femmes will find more identification in the antics, even though most unconventional, of the wacky character so broadly projected by Julie Harris than the men will have with the Isherwood role played by Laurence Harvey.

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Quite amusing is the sequence in which Harris gorges on caviar and champagne to the horror of purse-poor Harvey. Another chuckler is the wild party tossed by Clive (Ron Randell), the American playboy with whom the femme screwball has taken up, and the odd characters that drift in and out as the bacchanalian celebration hits its peak. Randell does a convincing job of the character.

Less frequently involved in the story is Shelley Winters, seen as a subdued German girl who, with her fiance (Anton Diffring) is beginning to feel the first anti-Jewish pressure of the Hitler regime. The top players, and others, are competent in answering the rather light demands of story and direction.

The filming was done in London and lacks the production polish accomplished on practically all domestic features.

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I Am a Camera

UK

  • Production: Romulus. Director Henry Cornelius; Producer Jack Clayton (assoc.); Screenplay John Collier; Camera Guy Green; Editor Clive Donner; Music Malcolm Arnold; Art Director William Kellner
  • Crew: (B&W) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1955. Running time: 98 MIN.
  • With: Julie Harris Laurence Harvey Shelley Winters Ron Randell Lea Seidl Anton Diffring

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