Miranda (1948)

This is a rather harmless old black and white comedy-fantasy. I had never heard of it before this opportunity came along to watch it, and the only name I recognized was jolly Margaret Rutherford, a familiar and very busy character actress for decades. Glynis Johns carries the film with her pretty face, blond hair and vibrant personality. The fantasy aspect is that she plays a mermaid. It is not a classic to join ones on my shelf for multiple viewings, but it is entertaining enough to be worth the time. Miranda is the mermaid that a doctor brings home from a fishing trip, whereupon every man in sight falls for her like a shot. (Listen, guys, you carry her across the room with her arms around your neck and see if you don’t fall for her.) The dialogue is crisp, often witty, and sounds modern, not very dated at all. Though the aquatic puns and plays on words fall flat once in a while. (Which is why I am not using descriptive phrases, like saying that the plot moved along swimmingly,) Miranda gets away with a lot as a character, partly because she is young and sweet, and also because Doc is passing off her Fish-fin lower body as her being a paraplegic. Just as, for example, the Dudley Moore title character in Arthur can say anything with drunken impunity (well, until he meets Liza Minnelli), so can Miranda be risqué and come out with double entendres without the women folk throwing her back into the drink. The ending was rather predictable to me, but there weren’t many places it could go, and it was handled with aplomb. I especially thought the doctor’s wife’s character was well-written, as played by Google Withers. She seemed sure of her husband’s love for her, and her tolerance drove the plot and allowed it to seem more realistic, within the constraint of there being a mermaid, of course! Interestingly, there seems to have been a sequel, called Mad About Men, in 1954, with only Miranda and Nurse Cary (Rutherford) repeating their roles.

Griffiths Jones is ("Dr. Paul Martin") who leaves his wife to go on a Cornish fishing trip where he falls foul of mischievous mermaid "Miranda" (Glynis Johns) who holds him captive in her underwater grotto. Her condition for release is that he take her to London where, abetted by Margaret Rutherford as "Nurse Carey" she wreaks havoc, flirting with all the men she meets. It's a rather one-joke film that starts engagingly enough, but as the joke grows thin - and, frankly, preposterous, the performance of Johns starts to grate a little. Googie Withers is quite good as the doctor's somewhat sceptical wife, as is David Tomlinson as their rather hapless chauffeur but - like her tail - the story is just a bit thin and flails about a bit too much as it drifts from comedy to romantic melodrama