Major Barbara

When I read Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw's play, in college I was troubled by it. It sets two philosophies against one another: the notion that poverty is noble, and the opposite, which is poverty is nothing to be proud of. The yin and yang are the title character, an officer in the Salvation Army, and her father, a munitions manufacturer. Although the play is ostensibly a comedy, it presents the industrialist as a person who, while congenial and generous, but also as someone who is almost above being human, one of the men who control all our lives, a force of nature.

The play was first produced in 1907, but Shaw was still alive and kicking to write the script for the film version in 1941, directed by Gabriel Pascal. In a prologue, in which is seen as a written document, Shaw writes, "If you do not love every word, it is a disappointment to us both." I must say I did love almost every word, and now, almost forty years later, I see the play in a different light.

Wendy Hiller plays Barbara (brilliantly), and Rex Harrison is a professor of Greek who falls in love at first sight with her. He joins the Army, though he's really doing it to just to be near her. Her family is funded by her father, Andrew Undershaft (Robert Morley), who hasn't seen any of his children in several years. The mother decides it's time to settle the future of the family's finances, and Morley arrives, fascinated by the reunion with his offspring, most so of Barbara.

He visits her at the Army's headquarters, where he finds the poor getting meals. Another man arrives, a ruffian, Robert Newton, whose girlfriend has left him for the Army. He gets rough and knocks around a young woman (played by a very young Deborah Kerr), and Hiller endeavors to save his soul. But she grows disillusioned when the General (Sybil Thorndike) accepts money from both Morley and a whiskey distiller. She believes that money should not be taken from immoral sources, and that one can't buy salvation, one has to earn it by praying.

Morley then takes his family on a tour of his factory. Yes, he has become rich because of war, but he reasons that by employing people he is doing more than a charity can. When Hiller asks him his religion, he says, "I'm a millionaire, that's my religion." Later, he will tells his spineless son, who wants to go into politics, that "I am the government." This rings a bell even today, when we live in a plutocracy where the people who run the country, whether it's the U.S. or Great Britain, are the ones who own the politicians.

Major Barbara is also oddly prescient about income inequality. Morley takes good care of his workers, and thus seduces the idealistic Harrison into accepting the inheritance of the company. While Shaw does not condemn the Salvation Army, he clearly places it behind capitalism, as Morley wins the argument, although Hiller accepts defeat graciously.

This film is amazingly erudite, with abundant literary references--Morley calls Harrison Euripides and Harrison calls Morley Machiavelli. Surely if it were made today those references would be struck. It is a movie about ideas, and thus out of place from most movies made, well, ever. My only quibble is the odd casting of Morley. He's fine, but was only 33 at the making of the movie, the same age as Harrison, an only four years older than Hiller. It was as if they were making an amateur theatrical and put a gray wig and beard on a younger actor. Strange.

The film was made during the London blitz, and often the cast and crew had to duck into shelters. The film was still made on time and under budget, though, and was a critical and financial success. It was edited by David Lean, and the cinematographer was Ronald Neame, who would go to direct films such as The Poseidon Adventure.