Leofwine_draca JASSY is a slow-moving historical drama/romance that has the benefit of being shot in Technicolor which looks great for 1947. The plot is set in the gentrified world of the 17th century and features a sprawling narrative involving multiple characters and the ways in which their lives intertwine. The opening scenes, in which a drunken lord ends up gambling everything he owns, are very good indeed and feature Dennis Price at his best in a brief cameo. Basil Sydney's ruthless villain is very fine too and reminded me of Lionel Barrymore in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, he's the ultimate Scrooge. The plot slows down and begins to drag when the second generation characters are introduced.Romantic male lead Dermot Walsh is a bit of a drag and doesn't bring the brooding charisma that his 1950s work would allow for. Don't blame him, blame the lifeless script. Margaret Lockwood, familiar from Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES, is better and resolutely sassy for the era. However, the narrative feels rather long-winded and the outcome inevitable, although there are some enjoyable sub-plots, one of which includes a cast-against-type Esma Cannon as a dumb servant. The film was directed, somewhat lethargically, by Bernard Knowles, who would go on to work extensively in television in the 1950s, shooting the likes of COLONEL MARCH OF Scotland YARD.

drednm Sprawling costume drama casts Margaret Lockwood as a gypsy girl Jassy who has second sight. She gets a job as maid in the household of a once-great family who have lost everything due to father's (Dennis Price) gambling. But she falls in love with the son (Dermot Walsh) whose ambition it is to regain the family estate from the cruel master (Basil Sydney).Later, Jassy gets a job at the school for girls where she befriends the daughter of the cruel master (Patricia Roc) and poses as her friend when the girl is expelled from the school. She moves into the estate where she is made housekeeper. But the cruel master has his eye on her.In another storyline, a brutish blacksmith beats his wife and daughter (Esma Cannon) causing the daughter to lose her voice via a throat injury. She eventually gets a job as maid in the estate where Jassy has gone to live. The "loony" as she is called, becomes the devoted slave to Jassy.After a riding accident, the cruel master is saved by the loony. He is returned to his estate where Jassy takes full control. But after his death Jassy and the loony are accused of murder.Lockwood is terrific as Jassy, the gypsy girl who is kinder and truer than all the grand people around her. Cannon turns is a superb performance as the pitiful loony. Dennis Price, Patricia Roc, Dermot Walsh, and Basil Sydney are also very good. Co-stars include Linden Travers, Ernest Thesiger, Cathleen Nesbitt, Susan Shaw, Hugh Pryse, Jean Cadell, Beatrice Varley, Torin Thatcher, and Nora Swinburne.

Igenlode Wordsmith Ultimately, I was left rather disappointed in "Jassy" after a promising start. I think this is not helped by the way that the title character is the last of all to appear (in somewhat unconvincing 'dirty' make-up). Up to this point the plot has been unequivocally centred around young Barney Hatton; the audience is now expected to do a U-turn and enlist its emotions on the part of someone completely different, as the plot sets off cross-country in pursuit of Jassy's odyssey instead. It is not until some considerable time and a good deal of social-climbing have passed that we see anything again of the complex web of characters who seemed so important at the start...What I found disorienting was that the film seemed to keep switching allegiances in this manner throughout, which made it hard in the final analysis to become emotionally attached to any of the characters; by the end none of them seemed very likable, although I assume we were supposed to be on Jassy's side. The characters keep shifting -- good, bad, indifferent -- in what at first impressed me as a refusal to stereotype Nick Helmar, for example, as the villain of the piece, but ended up feeling like random inconsistencies bestowed for the sake of the plot.The scenario didn't come across as particularly well-rooted in the social realities of the era (or even of the genre) either. With one hand it emphasises the sacred priority of 'debts of honour' incurred at the gaming-table; but then with the other it expects us to believe that a man detected cheating at cards would be considered hard-done-by when his host *merely* tossed a glass of wine in his face. Such a sin, on the contrary, attracted utter social condemnation -- small wonder that Chris Hatton (Dennis Price, perhaps the most watchable player in the film) takes his own life... but scarcely as a result of the insult!Likewise, "Jassy" displays a good deal of wordless appreciation of the long hours and hard work expected of a 'tweeny', and the selfishness of the upper-class schoolgirls who expect her to sacrifice her brief nights to their escapades -- but then appears oblivious to the social cataclysm that threatens when Helmar's daughter attempts to pass off a serving-maid as a house guest and her father recognises the girl's name. Not only does Nick not turn a hair at discovering that his guest is the daughter of the rabble-rousing peasant leader who once berated him at the head of a mob on his own doorstep, but instead of throwing her out as a common impostor he actually apologises to her, which the script evidently considers the very least he could do. And apparently nobody in the village so much as blinks at seeing a raggedy ex-dairymaid elevated over them all as lady of the manor, without the slightest attempt to hide her origins.(I was also very frustrated by an apparent plot hole, in that a never-consummated marriage would not have been legally binding on the husband -- a very foolish trick for Jassy to play!)The love-affair with Barney, supposed to be the lynch-pin of the plot but rarely evident, failed to convince me. Dilys Helmar, introduced as a sympathetic character and ultimately used as an example of a mercenary bitch, had me completely confused, as did her father Nick, alternating between pettiness, random violence, and rare humanity.In a better film these contradictions would be an indication of great skill, but here, alas, they come across as signs of arbitrary incompetence. If you really want a 'gorgeous English film from the 40s', try "The Wicked Lady", "Blanche Fury" (in many ways similar) or "Fanny by Gaslight" for authentic melodrama and Gainsborough swagger: by comparison I'm afraid "Jassy" is a bit of a mess.

weho90069 My comments are brief: Whoever owns the rights to distribute "Jassy" should get their butts in gear and release this colorfully stylish, wistful feature to DVD pronto! Americans (of which I am one) are generally (and shamelessly) content to glut themselves on Hollywood-based product (whether good or not), and continually ignore hallmarks of English cinema. "Jassy" (and "Blanche Fury", another jewel buried away in some vault) are overdue their chance to titillate new audiences and deserve to be released to DVD. Roan? Anchor Bay? Criterion Collection?HeloooOOOO!...