CLAUDIA AND DAVID -For Sale/DVD- Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young Rare DVD

Apparently several years of marriage, a child and her own mother's death have not made a fully grown-up woman of Rose Franken's Claudia—a fact which is happily convenient where purposes of entertainment are concerned. For a still slightly adolescent Claudia, guileless and full of ardent whims, is a cheerful and captivating creature—at least, to behold on the screen. That is why "Claudia and David," is as a neatly developed sequel to Miss Franken's film of three years back, and a wonderfully pleasant and touching picture in a true romantic vein.

True, there are certain adult aspects to this older and riper Claudia which suggest that the young thing is becoming a leisure-class wife. She inclines to be pettily jealous of another lady in her Connecticut station-wagon set, which provokes some considerable squabbles with her remarkably tolerant spouse. She accepts the refined attentions of another man with unguarded delight. And she throws herself into embraces (with her husband) with extraordinary zeal.

But she is still an incalculable person, so far as behavior goes, and a constant source of amazement in the oblique processes of her mind. She drives a car with blithe abandon, she bursts out with blank non sequiturs and she baffles her husband with her confidence in the prognostications of a seer. She is also hysterically nervous about the health and well-being of her child, and she has the same immature terror of death as she had three years ago. Indeed, it is a critical accident to David, her husband, which provides the dramatic climax of the story and the emotional purge for her. Claudia is still unable to conceive of the loss of one she loves.

This evident spiritual innocence is really the basis of the charm of Miss Franken's popular character, and it is well represented here. It is also kept reasonably consistent with the character as originally portrayed. For Miss Franken and her collaborators (William Brown Meloney and Vera Caspary) on the script have written not only with affection but understanding of a notional and sensitive girl who is painfully—but none the less amusingly—reaching tardy maturity. They have charged the script with sprightly action, literate dialogue and not so much burdensome sentiment that the whimsicality cloys. And Dorothy McGuire, as previously, plays Claudia with such candid tenderness that she overcomes all the discomfort that such a character might inspire.

Robert Young, too, is delightful in the role which he also played before of Claudia's long-suffering husband, an essentially saintly gent. And John Sutton, Mary Astor, Gail Patrick, Rose Hobart and Jerome Cowan are good in the roles of Connecticut gentry who live in magnificence if not full ease. Walter Lang's capable direction has brought out the best in actors and script, and most luxurious settings have been provided by Twentieth Century-Fox.

Incidentally, if Fox and Miss Franken are planning a series of Claudia films, they might keep an eye to the future of that mother-son relation starting here. From the way it looked to this parent, a complex was plainly taking root. Maybe, before you know it, we'll see Claudia as the mother in "The Silver Cord."

CLAUDIA AND DAVID, screen play by Rose Franklin and William Brown Meloney, adapted by Vera Caspary from stories by Miss Franken, directed by Walter Lang

Claudia . . . . . Dorothy McGuire
David . . . . . Robert Young
Elizabeth Van Doren . . . . . Mary Astor
Phil Dexter . . . . . John Sutton
Julia Naughton . . . . . Gail Patrick
Edith Dexter . . . . . Rose Hobart
Dr. Harry . . . . . Harry Davenport
Nancy Riddle . . . . . Florence Bates
Brian O'Toole . . . . . Jerome Cowan
Bertha . . . . . Else Janssen
Fritz . . . . . Frank Twedell
Bobby . . . . . Anthony Sydes
Hartley Naughton . . . . . Pierre Watkin