Mad About the Boy * * * ½

This is another film being shown at The British Film Festival: A documentary on Noel Coward.

I've always known that Noel Coward was a giant of theatre but to be honest I did not know that much about him, which is understandable.  He died fifty years ago, so he was someone that previous generations mostly enjoyed and spoke of.  And when I was as a young person I was not particularly interested in things that previous generations thought were good.

Noel responds to my review:"Sic him!"

I do not think those great plays and songs he wrote get much of an airing these days and yet their titles remain well known, especially Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Private Lives, Blithe Spirit, Mad About the Boy.  But as this documentary shows, they are a fraction of his canon of work.  He started performing and writing at seven and never stopped! Though, other than his adored mother, Coward was not much distracted by family matters.  In these "safer" times the documentary is not evasive about him being gay.

This documentary is well made, especially considering how little filmed material is available. There are sections from a couple of TV interviews made in his latter days (nicely rem-mastered). The rest is made up of reading from his memoirs, stills and slides, and extracts from his plays that were turned into films.  But overall it tells the story of Noel  Coward very well covering his meteoric rise to be the highest paid writer in the world by the time he was thirty, his falls from popularity and recoveries; his many friends and his extraordinary acts of generosity and his service in the war.

 It covers a lot and leaves you well informed. so that in the end one is left in awe as to how one man could have achieved so much.  Though he does explain it himself with one word "Talent".