SPIRIT OF NOVEL CAPTURED

Evening Star, Issue 21571, 17 November 1933, Page 11

SPIRIT OF NOVEL CAPTURED

FILM OF PRIESTLEY'S 'GOOD COMPANIONS' In modern fiction a rebel is seldom a hero, and conversely a hero is seldom a rebel. But this was not always thus! According to currently selling fiction, the hero of olden times was the rebel who leaped upon his charger and fought with might and main against the iniquities of his feudal master. In what is probably the greatest example of modern English fiction, J. B. Priestley s ‘ The Good Companions,’ you will find three rebels, round whom much of tha story centres. None of them had chargers, but a sports , car, a motor lorry, and a railway tram served their puposes excellently. , By Tray of elucidation . •■* ijap« pened thus: Jess Oakroyd rebels against the manner in which he is down-trodden at the Yorkshire mill where he is employed as a joiner, and in. consequence frot “ t’saek.” His wife nags about the Toss of the job and he rebels once more, this time leaving home, per'medium of a stolen ride on a motor lorry heading “down south.” , ‘ In mo Jollifant, Cambridge graduate and first-year school teacher, rehe s against the drudgery of his livelihood, the school diet of Shepherd s pie and stewed prunes day in and day out, aiuf the overbearing and thoroughly, obnoxious personages who arc head minster and mistress respectively of . his school, TO him .the . train-becomes a cliarger, and he. sets out heading he knows not where, iior cares. _ Miss Elizabeth Trant, now a .charming spinster of thirty, had in cailier vears voluntarily ended a romance to care for her invalid father. Now at his death she rebels against the thought of becoming an old lady’s companion, and she invests the little money her father left her in a “ chargor ’—also known as a. sports roadster —and sets .out “ into the blue.” - It is these three rebels who lead you to the centre of the story, for fate guides their footsteps till they meet together in Rawsley, a little town in the heart of the English Midlands, there to join forces with, a .stranded troupe of pierrots and with them to form and he “The Good Companions. - J. B, Priestley has performed a notable piece of literary work in writing ‘ The Good Companions,,’' for he has pictured the hidden desire of almost every person—the desire to he go whither you choose, unhampered by, the. bonds of business and convention—and to live in the good companionship of pals tried and true, Mention must also be made of 'Motor Saville, for he it was who produced anti directed the film, which will be screened at the Grand Theatre on Friday next, making it a perfect representation on celluloid of the spirit and friendly atmosphere of Priestley’s tulb.