Saturday | July 23, 2011 9:30 pm

The Late George Apley

Screening on Film

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Ronald Colman, Vanessa Brown, Richard Haydn.
US, 1947, 35mm, black & white, 93 min.
Print source: Criterion

A gently satiric comedy of manners set in pre-WWI Boston, The Late George Apley stars Ronald Coleman as the eponymous Beacon Hill Brahmin whose hopeless provincialism leaves him impervious to the changes rapidly transforming his world. An important apprentice work, The Late George Apley reveals the type of scintillating dialogue and double entendre characteristic of Mankiewicz's best films, showcased here in the first of three screenplays written for Mankiewicz by the native Bostonian Philip Dunne. The film's sudden visual flourishes and radical camera movements point as well towards the baroque visual style of Mankiewicz's late work. – HG