A bright shining star of British cinema, Wendy Hiller has made only
around twenty films since her debut in the 1937 quota quickie Lancashire
Lass, and the particular affection which she seems to inspire can be
laid at the door of only three of these twenty: Anthony
Asquith's Pygmalion
(1938), Gabriel Pascal's
Major Barbara (1941), and I
Know Where I'm Going! (1945), directed by Michael
Powell and Emeric
Pressburger. What inspires the affection is an unmannered directness,
a shyness, an aloofness from seduction, and an economy of performance
which makes restraint seem like a positive value rather than an absence
of passion. Her alert intelligence in I Know Where I'm Going! may be
blown a little off course by romance, but she falls in love with dignity
and retains a sense of herself.
After 1945 much of her work was in theatre, and though she won an Oscar
for her supporting role in Separate Tables (1958), and was memorable
as Gertrude Morel opposite Trevor Howard in Sons
and Lovers (1960), her appearances in film were intermittent and succumbed
to the 'British disease' of anthology casting: Murder
on the Orient Express (1974), Voyage of the Damned (1976). The
Elephant Man (1980) and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)
offered her small but rewarding parts, and television gave her some
excellent roles perhaps most notably as the steely matriarch of Trevor
Griffiths' Country (1981).
