This film has a resonance for me as I too was 6 years old in 1952 being born in 1946 the same age as Mandy Miller was when she performed her signature film of a little deaf girl.I vaguely remember my parents talking about this film then but now at 63 this was the first time I had seen it.I have to admit my eyes were damp the whole way through as I too can remember the many bomb sites then around London, the old taxis & cars, the ladies fashions, what my primary school was like in my second year and playtime with fellow infants.
It is not often I award 9/10 for a film but this was one such occasion.The whole cast, director, producer. scriptwriter and production crew performed admirably and of course Mandy Miller's central role was wholly believable.The film did not lapse into mawkish sentimentality once but kept a realistic grip throughout so that one sensed it was almost a documentary but kept the dramatic emphasis together.
"The heavy" Mr Akland, was played by Edward Chapman a role he played in "Gone to Earth" (1949) as a hypocritical church deacon. In Mandy he tries to stir up trouble by suggesting and trying to prove the mother Christine (Phyllis Calvert) and Searle (Jack Hawkins) are having an affair, for jealous professional reasons.To show Edward could also play comedic roles he is more famous in the UK for playing the hapless foil Mr Grimsdale to Norman Wisdom in the latter's 1950s comic films.Similarly the actress Marjory Fielding who plays Mrs Garland the mother of Mandy's father Harry (Terence Morgan), belayed her very stagey style of acting seen in "Quiet Wedding" (1941) and acted in a low key modern idiom (for 1952).Godfrey Tearle as her husband Mr Garland had obviously aged 17 years since 1935 when he had played the traitor in Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps" with Robert Donat & Madeline Carroll (still the best version of this film).As a chess player who also played by correspondence in the 1960s, I was naturally intrigued by the arrival of one of his opponents moves which was PXP en passant.Mandy recognised the "P" sound from the chess scorecard after her extensive deaf help given gratis by Mr Searle (an excellent role for Jack Hawkins) the principal of the deaf school in Manchester.This was the abiding proof Mr Garland needed to take the initiative between his son Harry & Searle to show the beneficial effect on Mandy's speech patterns from the specialised help given to her.I would also like to place on record the wonderful real deaf children who were selected by the producers to participate in the film who made the experience so convincing.The producers gave this deaf school a vote of thanks in the opening credits.
