| Major Barbara | |
| Director: | Gabriel Pascal Uncredited: Harold French David Lean |
| Starring: | Wendy Hiller Rex Harrison Robert Morley Robert Newton |
| Producer: | Gabriel Pascal |
| Editing: | David Lean Charles Frend |
| Studio: | Gabriel Pascal Productions |
| Distributor: | General Film Distributors |
| Runtime: | 131 minutes |
| Budget: | £230,000[1] or $800,000[2] |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Music: | William Walton |
Major Barbara is a 1941 British film starring Wendy Hiller and Rex Harrison. The film was produced and directed by Gabriel Pascal and edited by David Lean. It was adapted for the screen by Marjorie Deans and Anatole de Grunwald, based on the 1905 stage play Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw. It was both a critical and a financial success.[3]
In this social satire, Barbara Undershaft (Hiller), an idealistic major in the Salvation Army, is deeply troubled by the fact that her father, Andrew Undershaft (Robert Morley), is a wealthy weapons manufacturer. Meanwhile, Andrew is looking for an heir for his industrial empire, in particular a foundling like himself.
Major Barbara was filmed in London during The Blitz bombing of 1940. During air raids, the crew and cast repeatedly had to dodge into bomb shelters. The film's producer-director, Pascal, never stopped the production and the film was completed on schedule.[4]
According to another account the film was meant to take ten weeks but took twenty weeks. The original budget of £130,000 was insufficient to complete it so J. Arthur Rank provided £100,000 necessary. This resulted in Rank making a full commitment to investing in films.[1]
According to Kinematograph Weekly it was the sixth most popular film of 1941 in Britain, after 49th Parallel, Great Dictator, Pimpernel Smith and Lady Hamilton.[5]
In a contemporary review, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times:
To call it a manifest triumph would be arrant stinginess with words. For this is something more than just a brilliant and adult translation of a stimulating play, something more than a captivating compound of ironic humor and pity. This is a lasting memorial to the devotion of artists working under fire, a permanent proof for posterity that it takes more than bombs to squelch the English wit. It is as wry and impudent a satire of conventional morals and social creeds as though it had been made in a time of easy and carefree peace. It is, in short, a more triumphant picture than any the British have yet sent across.[6]More recently, Time Out wrote, "There is plenty to relish, notably Newton and Morley hamming it up (as, respectively, the rumbustious Bill Walker and the overbearing tycoon), and Deborah Kerr in her debut; but it does tend to just sit there."[7]
Major Barbara was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection on 23 February 2010, as part of the box set George Bernard Shaw on Film.