Tweet

Three years after her star-making turn in Pygmalion, Wendy Hiller starred in another caustic George Bernard Shaw adaptation. A sophisticated and provocative critique of the corruption of idealism, Major Barbara stars Hiller as the eponymous Salvation Army Major, who becomes disillusioned when her reviled capitalist father (Robert Morley), a munitions factory owner, rescues her underfunded operation to humiliate her. To her horror, the Army general gratefully accepts the donation, and Barbara's beau (Rex Harrison) takes a job at the factory.

Shaw's dry wit infuses the screenplay (‘alcohol enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning’), and is delivered with wicked timing from a terrific cast. Hiller is a marvel as the potentially sanctimonious Barbara, and there are great turns from Morley and Robert Newton as a reprobate whose soul Barbara longs to save. Filmed during the Blitz, the emblem of the munitions factory took on a whole new dimension, and Major Barbara remains a masterpiece of acerbic satire.

 

Alex Davidson on 12th July 2007
View all 216 of Alex Davidson's reviews