Movie review - "Jassy" (1947) **

Dull Gainsborough melodrama, which helped kill off the cycle despite the fact it was shot in Technicolor and stars Margaret Lockwood. Part of the problem is that Lockwood doesn't play a villain - but she's not really a heroine either. She plays a half gypsy villager who goes to work for a once-rich family impoverished due to dad's gambling.

There's plenty of plot and characters: a blacksmith's daughter is literally struck dumb, an aristocratic gambler (Dennis Price) is caught cheating and shoots himself, women cheat on their husbands, Jassy's (Lockwood's) father is killed, Lockwood becomes friend with Pat Roc (who is the daughter of her former employer), then she becomes head of staff of the noble responsible for her father's death (Basil Sydney), who she then marries. There's poisoning, second sight, and a fair bit of whipping.

It's a mess: Lockwood seems to be shaping up as this sympathetic villain, whose good father was killed by a drunken rich noble, who she then dominates, marries and refuses to sleep with in revenge... but he is killed by the deaf girl. And Lockwood is united with the spunky noble (Dermot Walsh) guy. Pat Roc seems to be the good girl in love with the spunky noble but in actual fact she loves someone else. Was this rewritten?

They tampered with the formula too much on this one. Colour doesn't really help it much either. Lockwood isn't in great form and Dermot Walsh a poor Stewart Granger substitute but Basil Sydney and Dennis Price are fine, as is John Laurie and Ernest Thesiger.