Kipps [The Remarkable Mr Kipps] ***½ (1941, Michael Redgrave, Phyllis Calvert, Diana Wynyard) – Classic Movie Review 1836

Director Carol Reed’s 1941 vintage film Kipps [The Remarkable Mr Kipps] stars an ideally cast Michael Redgrave, who does wonders with the role of H G Wells’s draper’s assistant and apprentice Mr Arthur Kipps. He falls in love with a snobbish society lady Helen (Diana Wynyard), who is clearly above his station in life and will not let him be himself.

But then he unexpectedly inherits great wealth and uses his fortune to try to turn himself a gentleman. Helen becomes his fiancée but he becomes re-acquainted with another woman – Ann the serving maid (Phyllis Calvert), who has been his friend since they were children. The questions are, is the money blinding him from bringing him the woman he truly wants and which of them should he pick to be Mrs Kipps?

Director Reed’s film version of H G Wells’s novel Kipps The Story of a Simple Soul is very entertaining even if it falls somewhat short of being a bona fide classic, and is not quite in the class of Reed’s The Third Man, Odd Man Out or The Fallen Idol. The movie may lack bounce and wit, but nevertheless the story is strong, the acting is vibrant, and Sidney Gilliat’s steadfast and steady screenplay has a quiet glow of warmth and appeal.

Philip Frost plays Kipps as a boy and Diana Calderwood plays Ann as a girl. Arthur Riscoe, Max Adrian, Helen Haye, Hermione Baddeley, Felix Aylmer, Michael Wilding, Lloyd Pearson, Edward Rigby, Frank Pettingel, Beatrice Varley and Kathleen Harrison are also among the huge cast of Brit worthies.

Also in the cast are Carol Gardiner, Marda Shannon, Robert McCarthy, Arthur Denton, Diana Calderwood, Viscount Castlerosse, Philip Frost, Muriel Aked, Betty Ann Davies, MacKenzie Ward, Betty Jardine, George Carney, Irene Brown and Peter Graves.

Kipps runs 108 minutes but the cut version is only 82 minutes. It is also known in America as The Remarkable Mr Kipps. It was filmed at Gaumont-British Studios, Lime Grove, Shepherd’s Bush, London.

Kipps [The Remarkable Mr Kipps] is directed by Carol Reed, runs 108 minutes or 82 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Sidney Gilliat, is shot in black and white by Arthur Crabtree, is produced by Edward Black and is scored by Charles Williams.

Kipps became the stage show Half a Sixpence in 1963 in London’s West End as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele, opening at the Cambridge Theatre on 21 March 1963, with Marti Webb in her first leading role. Steele starred again on Broadway in 1965, where the show played for 511 performances. Steele also starred in movie musical version of Half a Sixpence (1967).

Cameron Mackintosh financed and produced a rewritten version of the show, which opened in July 2016 at the Chichester Festival Theatre and transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre in London’s West End on 17 November 2016.

Michael Redgrave is perhaps best known for Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1836

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