ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
Director: John Kent Harrison
Cast: Ella Ballentine, Sara Botsford, Martin Sheen, Julia Lalonde, Kate Hennig
Rating: (PG)
Four stars (out of five)
While I have read some of the books, I always preferred Jo March from Little Women.
Yet watching this latest screen version of Anne of Green Gables (Rialto) I felt myself luxuriating in a delightful wallow of childhood nostalgia.
There will be plenty who find the glorious Technicolor of this story of how a talkative orphan finds a home among solid farming folk overly sentimental, but that is rather the point of the exercise.
Elderly siblings Marilla (Sara Botsford) and Matthew Cuthbert (Martin Sheen) are getting too old to run their farm.
Someone suggests they get an orphan boy to do the chores around the place and so they write off to have one sent.
When Anne Shirley (Ella Ballentine) arrives instead they intend to send her back immediately.
Anne quickly has Matthew in her corner, but Marilla proves to be a harder nut to crack.
Ballentine makes rather a good Anne.
She prattles away making the complicated dialogue sound as if it has just popped into her head and she gives Anne's flashes of red-headed fury complete believability.
In fact, it is those moments when Anne Shirley gets her dander up and lets rip against injustices that make this often placid film crackle with energy.
If I had come to Anne of Green Gables cold I might have found it a little dull, but for anyone who knows and loves the books this is a visual treat that will reawaken childhood delights.
- Christine Powley
