Pas de Deux

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

Directed by CHARLES JARROTT

Screenplay by JOHN HALE

Two fine actresses, Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, give some force and substance to this otherwise dreary history. The script seems to be made up of captions from some educational coloring book, and the story itself has become hackneyed through innumerable incarnations as a play, a previous film, even a television spectacular. Save for the two ladies, there is little apparent justification for mak ing this version, and even less for seeing it.

Miss Redgrave's Mary is regal, nervous, passionate, uncertain -- a delicate creature in life who becomes indomitable only in death. Miss Jackson's Elizabeth is cunning, complex, intriguing -- a monarch whose desire for power is both a motivating force and a tragic flaw, Otherwise, various men of the court make violent mischief amongst each other on staircases and battlements.

Nigel Davenport is a steady Bothwell to Miss Redgrave, and Trevor Howard, as William Cecil, is always fun to watch, even though not at his best. The rest of the cast appear to have been plucked from the back room of Madame Tussaud's.

qedJ.C.

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