CARAVAN

UK, 1946, 117 minutes, Black-and-white.
Stewart Granger, Jean Kent, Anne Crawford, Dennis Price, Robert all Helpmann, Gerard Heinz, David Horne.
Directed by Arthur Crabtree.

Dastardly might be a word that comes to mind while watching Caravan. Later bloggers on the IMDb refer to it as “a hoot�.

Perhaps to do adjusters it should be seen in the context of British filmmaking at the end of World War II. At Gainsborough’s Studios, there was a move to make high melodramas, many with period setting. There was The Man in Grey (by a novel from the author of Caravan, Lady Elinore Smith, and the credit is referring to “the famous novel�), The Wicked Lady, Fanny by Gaslight, Madonna of the Seven Moons (with Stewart Granger and Jean Kent in the cast).

These films were costume melodramas, highly melodramatic, sometimes over the top. However, they were very popular with the British filmgoing public in the mid 1940s, highly imaginative stories which took them out of the war experience, the post-war experience, rebuilding, rationing…

Caravan has British and Spanish settings. At the centre is Richard Daryl, played with his usual dapper style by Stewart Granger, venturing into some swashbuckling’s which would serve him well when he went to Hollywood, skirmish, Prisoner of Zenda. He rescues a Spanish count from thugs in London, recounts his story, gets the patronage of the car to publishers his novel and sent him on a mission to return a necklace to Granada.

In the flashbacks, there are stories of Richard and his encounters with the more aristocratic Oriana and the third member of their group, the foppish Francis. Oriana and Richard intend to be married but he goes to London to make money so that he can support Oriana. In the meantime, the dastardly Francis, a fiendish fop played by Dennis Price,.’s out, wants to marry Oriana, gets his manservant, an opportunity to see Robert Altman playing a 19th-century hitman!, Accompanying Richard on his journey to Spain, trying to kill him, but setting up an ambush and achieving it on the final road to Granada.

In the meantime, a Gypsy dancer, Jean Kent being exotic, is attracted to him, tries to fall of the plot, rescued Richard when his left for dead, reviving him but his having lost his memory. Gradually, there is a love relationship but, unfortunately for her, she mentions the name Oriana which jogs Richard memory, sets him to return to Oriana but region of her marriage to Francis, because she had heard that Richard had died and was being pressurised by Frances.

All the ingredients for a melodramatic end, the count and Oriana travelling to Granada, Baal and her giving her life for Richard, his anger, his seeing the truth, and a final confrontation with France’s who disappears into quicksand.

The film was directed by cinematographer, Arthur Crabtree, who moved into directing with Madonna of the Seven moons and a number of smaller budget dramas.

The 21st-century audience, an entertaining high melodrama or, perhaps, something of a hoot.