Background
Anthony Asquith was born on 9 November 1902 in London. He was the son of the Liberal prime minister, a man apparently torn between social opposites.
Anthony Asquith was born on 9 November 1902 in London. He was the son of the Liberal prime minister, a man apparently torn between social opposites.
On the set, he affected a boilersuit and yet he was happiest with material that had built-in social distinctions. In the dark days of the British cinema in the 1950s—he had a high and quite unmerited reputation.
In fact, he was a dull, journeyman supervisor of the transfer to the screen of proven theatrical properties. The myth that his first film exploited sound audaciously survived only as long as its gimmicky claptrap remained unseen. For the rest, Dance, Pretti/ Lady is charming and The Importance of Being Earnest a decent reading of the play. Pygmalion is more than decent: it is a fine record of the play, and even if Leslie Howard is an odd Higgins, Wendy Hiller and Wilfred Lawson are matchless. But it is symptomatic of Asquith that he managed to make the Shaw of The Doctor’s Dilemma no better a dramatist than the Rattigan of The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy.
Venturing beyond such stagy subjects, he quickly floundered: Orders to Kill is a complete failure and Libel is lurid melodrama. In his last years he subsided into atrocious all-star vehicles, addled movies that accepted a 1920s notion of die intrinsic appeal of wealthy and successful people.