Laurence Olivier Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Penelope Houston

Critical Essay by Penelope Houston

In directing his first non-Shakespearean film [The Prince and the Showgirl], Laurence Olivier has kept mainly to a stage tempo. Lines are theatrically pointed, pauses held, the pace is muted. This method throws the performances into high relief, and it is inevitably for its playing, its much-publicised union of talents, that the film will be seen. Olivier himself repeats his stage performance, an accomplished exercise in building a sizeable pile of bricks without a great deal of straw….

Mildly entertaining, The Prince and the Showgirl remains in essence what it initially seemed in the stage production—lemonade in a champagne bottle. (p. 41)

Penelope Houston, "'The Prince and the Showgirl'," in Sight and Sound (copyright © 1957 by The British Film Institute), Vol. 27, No. 1, Summer, 1957, pp. 40-1.