You'll go a long way to find a greater fan of Cliff Odets than me so I was interested to see how he'd handle a very English story written by a Welshman with a flair for poetic language. Odets himself of course had a poetic way with words but the East Side of New York is more than the geographical three thousand miles from the East End of London. Most of the reviews I've read on IMDb were written by Americans and/or non-English people who, not unnaturally, have no idea how wayward the 'cockney' accents are - Dan Duryea, for example, doesn't even attempt one - and one reviewer even referred to Grant's own background in London when in fact he was born and brought up in Bristol a good two hundred miles away. Despite her failure to master cockney Ethel Barrymore walks away with the acting honours and fully deserved her Best Supporting Actress gong and despite what other reviewers have written I felt that the cast were in three or four different films with no sense of an ensemble at work. Given that he adapted the novel himself and also directed Odets can blame no one but himself for the lack of 'Odets type' dialogue, in fact on only one or two occasions do we hear anything even approaching his trademark speech. On the other hand Odets excelled at chronicling social injustice which is the same the world over and he clearly instructed the cameraman to stress light and shade throughout. Interesting rather than memorable but certainly worth seeing.
Review of None But the Lonely Heart
