Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

James Hitchcock As with many of George Bernard Shaw's plays, "Major Barbara" is essentially a political and social debate in dramatic form. At its heart is the conflict between the title character Barbara Undershaft, a Major in the Salvation Army, and her father Andrew Undershaft, a wealthy industrialist. (The family surname was derived from the church of St Andrew Undershaft in the city of London). Barbara is young and idealistic, deeply religious, a Christian socialist and a pacifist. Andrew is elderly, cynical, a freethinker in matters of religion, an apologist for capitalism and a man whose money has been made in the armaments industry. The crisis comes when the Salvation Army accepts a large donation from Andrew, much to Barbara's disgust as she despises her father and regards his money as morally tainted.Shaw's play was written in 1905, but the action of this film takes place at a more uncertain date. Some of the costumes would indeed suggest the late Victorian or Edwardian period, but the design of the motor cars, the Art Deco styling of Undershaft's factories and the Modernist accommodation provided for his workers all suggest that the story has been updated to the 1920s or 1930s. Although the film was shot in 1940, however, and premiered in 1941, the one decade in which we can be sure it is not set is the 1940s. There is no reference in the film to the war which was being waged at the time. Although Shaw always regarded himself as a socialist, he enjoyed a good argument as much as anyone, and he often gives a surprisingly generous hearing in his plays to capitalists and right-wingers, as he does to Andrew here. The film-makers clearly realised, however, that to start making points about the Nazi threat and about how Britain needed a strong arms industry to counter it would be to upset the balance of Shaw's play by loading the dice too much in Andrew's favour. So the action takes place in peacetime and no mention is made of any external threats to national security. (The scriptwriters also resisted the temptation to change the Christian name of Barbara's fiancé, Adolphus; audiences in 1941 must have been surprised to see the name "Adolf", even in Latinised form, given to a gentle, mild-mannered academic).Barbara regards the Salvation Army as hypocritical for accepting her father's money, but Shaw did not necessarily expect his audiences and readers to agree with her. Andrew's argument is that the charity doled out by the Salvation Army to the poor of London's East End is an inadequate answer to the problem of poverty; what the poor need is work, and as an employer he is in a position to provide it. Even Barbara, for all her moral scruples about the nature of her father's business, has to admit that he is an enlightened employer who looks after his workers' welfare and provides them with a steady income, even if he does so for self-interested motives. Andrew realises that a contented worker is a more productive worker, and one who is less likely to look for work elsewhere.Shaw's plays often involve the head more than the heart, and some of them work better on the printed page than they do on the stage. "Major Barbara", however, works well as a drama precisely because it involves a battle of the heart (represented by the intelligent but passionate Barbara) versus the head (represented by the cynically rationalistic Andrew and, to some extent, by Adolphus, an intellectual student of Greek literature). What makes the film work so well is that both main roles are so well played, the lovely Wendy Hiller (something of a specialist in Shavian drama) bringing out the full ardour of Barbara's crusading zeal and Robert Morley as Andrew putting up a robust defence of capital and of enlightened self-interest. They receive good support from Rex Harrison as Adolphus and Robert Newton as the Cockney thug Bill Walker who is later redeemed when he finds work at Andrew's factory; Newton was later to find fame playing another thuggish Cockney named Bill, Bill Sykes in David Lean's "Oliver Twist". (Not all the acting is as good; the Welsh-born Emlyn Williams shows us that it is not just Americans who find it difficult to put on a convincing Cockney accent).During his long lifetime, and in the years immediately following his death, Shaw enjoyed a very high reputation; he was sometimes even described as Britain's second-greatest playwright after Shakespeare. Today his place in the canon of English literature is perhaps rather less exalted than it was in 1941, and this may explain why this film is not particularly well-known nowadays. The themes of many of his plays, however, have remained relevant; "Major Barbara" is essentially a dramatisation of the perennial debate between idealism and pragmatism. With the exception of "My Fair Lady" (which owes most of its appeal to the music of Lerner and Loewe and to the charm of Audrey Hepburn) this must be my favourite Shavian film. It deserves to be remembered as a classic of the British cinema. 9/10

robertguttman One of my all-time favorite films, "Major Barbara" is a cinematic Shavian gem that stands alongside the original "Pygmalion", "Caesar and Cleopatra" and "The Devil's Disciple". Many viewers regard this as a rather verbose comedy-drama but then, as with Plato, dialogue was always what Shaw was all about. And what dialogue! There are more fireworks in ten minutes of "Major Barbara" then can be found in entire movies made nowadays, and without a single explosion or car chase! But then, like all Shaw dramas, this is a story about ideas, not about action. Although Major Barbara (Windy Hiller) is the title character, the real center of the story is her father, munitions tycoon Andrew Undershaft, played brilliantly by a fairly young, and uncharacteristically lean, Robert Morely. It is he who really moves the progress of the story, just as he has controlled the courses of the lives of his family in absentia for the past twenty years without their even being aware of it. As Barbara smugly repudiates his attempts to contribute his tainted money to save her Salvation Army mission, he ironically reminds her fiancée (and the audience) that she has actually accepted a great deal of it already. In fact, she has been living off his tainted money all her life. Tricked out with a Mephistophelean beard (he is constantly referred to as the "Prince of Darkness, and even his name seems redolent of Hell), Undershaft tempts his daughter and prospective son-in-law to abrogate their life in the Salvation Army for his life in the munitions business. Undershaft proposes to spend a day in Barbara's Salvation Army mission if she'll agree to spend a day at his munitions works. She agrees because, in her religious zeal, she's convinced she can convert her father. The worldly Undershaft, on the other hand, is equally sure that he can wean his daughter away from a life he perceives as a waste of her time and talent for one where he feels she can really make a difference. Whether viewers perceive Shaw's story as cynical or realistic depends upon their point of view. Clearly Shaw took the latter view, at least at the time he wrote "Major Barbara". However, perhaps the most remarkable thing about "Major Barbara" is that a film like this should have been produced in Britain at all during the very darkest days of World War II. It is almost impossible to imagine a film such as this being produced in Hollywood at all, let alone during wartime!

lawlibrarian Shaw decided to pose the question of whether money or religion leads to morality. It is a treat to see a screenplay written by the playwright...and the cast and performance were, to all reports, quite pleasing to Mr. Shaw. I certainly think that the cast and performance are excellent. Shaw based the central theme on the life of John Cadbury, the founder of the Cadbury chocolate business. Mr. Cadbury was a Quaker who spent much of his life working for social reform. The two major characters are Andrew Undershaft and his daughter, Barbara. Shaw could not make his protagonist a socially aware candy manufacturer - so Andrew Undershaft is cast as an arms merchant and his daughter, Barbara, who rejects the family business as immoral and joins the Salvation Army.Shaw plays the arms merchant's money off against the religion that Barbara has adopted and asks questions about the social compact, the origins of crime and criminal behavior and morality that were scandalous when the play was written 100 years ago and remain scandalous today.I don't know how this film came to be classified as a comedy - it is serious social commentary of the highest sort.

Mankin "Major Barbara (1941: **1/2). A lot of talent has gone into this film version of Shaw's play about a Salvation Army lass who is disillusioned when her Mission accepts a fat check from her father, a wealthy munitions manufacturer of wartime supplies. I happened to have the play on hand and referred back to it as I wasn't sure Shaw's meanings survived the rather tedious verbosity of the movie, which sags despite a great cast (Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, etc.). Shaw seems to be saying that when religion and capitalism fight it out, capitalism will always win as it provides jobs and shelter for the poor, whereas all religion can do is to concentrate on saving their souls. To Shaw, a man's soul is best saved when his belly is full and his future is secured. Ultimately, the girl decides it's better to labor in her father's vast factory, where she can save souls while working within the system. I believe Shaw was something of a Utopian Socialist. He called this play a "Discussion in Four Acts" and that's pretty much what the movie seemed to be.