I Live in Grosvenor Square

Direction is good, but the film is too long, and interest in it flags at times.

This seems to be something of a forgotten film despite being a major moneymaker of its year and starring Anna Neagle, a massively famous British star who never managed to conquer the American market. Evidently written as a means of encouraging co-operation and mutual understanding between British citizens and the American troops stationed in their homes during the massive build up to D-Day, the first half of the film as a result suffers badly from some forced comedy around linguistic and geographical differences. The actors all look a little uncomfortable in these sequences. The first half of the film is largely devoted to this strained humour and the building of a romance between an English woman (Neagle) and an American flyer (Dean Jagger.) Much time is also given over to Rex Harrison’s character who is engaged to Neagle and campaigning for election as the local MP for a rural constituency, the latter overseen by his father (Robert Morley) – a kindly but very tradition-bound individual. I was finding all of this to be a little labored until the final third of the film which suddenly changes gears to become a minor masterpiece of sentiment and emotion. At that point I realised the writers have deliberately spent a lot of time setting up the characters and their interactions so that when the key moments occur they are underpinned by real knowledge of who these people…

Browse discussions about “I Live in Grosvenor Square”

Jump to Reddit for live threads on this title.