A Julian Wintle-Leslie Parkyn Production. An Independent Artists Film. Made on locations in London and Wales and at Pinewood Studios. (Available on an excellent Granada DVD).
Copyright 1963 by Independent Artists Productions Limited. Never theatrically released in the United States or Australia. Released in the U.K. by J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors: 10 November 1963. 8,640 feet. 96 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Pretty Welsh girl comes to London, hoping to become a fashion model.
VIEWER'S GUIDE: I agree with the British censor's "X" certificate.
COMMENT: Hard to believe this one is based on a novel by Patrick Hamilton. True, it's depressing enough, but Hamilton usually leavens the gloom with intriguing mystery and/or the tightest of taut suspense. None of these elements are present here. Instead the conclusion is presented first and then the whole story is told in flashback. And what a familiar, if depressingly sordid tale it is too! The producers have tried to dress it up with color and an attractive heroine in Janet Munro, but even these ploys are undermined by Peter Graham Scott's relentlessly unimaginative direction with its tilted camera angles for the introductory conclusion and its monotonous succession of TV- style close-ups for the body of the film.
The support players are not much help either. Alan Badel, admittedly in a small, late-entering role, makes little impression. The fault is not so much with the players as with the humdrum, kitchen-sink script with its mercilessly slow-paced parade of uninteresting and almost totally unsympathetic characters, its well-worn but tedious plotting, its verbose but unrelievedly banal dialogue. And worst of all, is the insistently all-pervading atmosphere of doom-laden squalor of body and soul.
A morality play that will please no-one. Neither picture-goers seeking an escapist night out, nor the bell-ringing Bowdlers in our midst.
Copyright 1963 by Independent Artists Productions Limited. Never theatrically released in the United States or Australia. Released in the U.K. by J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors: 10 November 1963. 8,640 feet. 96 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Pretty Welsh girl comes to London, hoping to become a fashion model.
VIEWER'S GUIDE: I agree with the British censor's "X" certificate.
COMMENT: Hard to believe this one is based on a novel by Patrick Hamilton. True, it's depressing enough, but Hamilton usually leavens the gloom with intriguing mystery and/or the tightest of taut suspense. None of these elements are present here. Instead the conclusion is presented first and then the whole story is told in flashback. And what a familiar, if depressingly sordid tale it is too! The producers have tried to dress it up with color and an attractive heroine in Janet Munro, but even these ploys are undermined by Peter Graham Scott's relentlessly unimaginative direction with its tilted camera angles for the introductory conclusion and its monotonous succession of TV- style close-ups for the body of the film.
The support players are not much help either. Alan Badel, admittedly in a small, late-entering role, makes little impression. The fault is not so much with the players as with the humdrum, kitchen-sink script with its mercilessly slow-paced parade of uninteresting and almost totally unsympathetic characters, its well-worn but tedious plotting, its verbose but unrelievedly banal dialogue. And worst of all, is the insistently all-pervading atmosphere of doom-laden squalor of body and soul.
A morality play that will please no-one. Neither picture-goers seeking an escapist night out, nor the bell-ringing Bowdlers in our midst.