The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955)
Country: GB
Technical: col 100m
Director: Harold French
Cast: Moira Shearer, John Justin, Roland Culver, Harry Andrews, Kenneth More (as narrator)
Synopsis:
A viscount in the diplomatic service goes through life obsessed with the form of his first love, and leads a double existence so that he can woo every girl who reminds him of her.
Review:
Based on Rattigan's play "Who Is Sylvia?", this Wildean exercise in Bunburying, with Justin as Algernon and Culver as Jack Worthing, sparkles in the first reel but becomes bogged down in contrivances aimed at showcasing the star's terpsichorean skills. The extract from Sleeping Beauty is a notable intrusion, all the more because Miss Shearer's talent for light comedy is self-evident from the off, and by far the best thing in it. The colour is smudgy, the direction brisk but undistinguished, and by the time the plot unravels we have moved from camp waspishness ('She'll be better off on her back' - 'Well, quite') to a rather depressing accommodation with reality, as the two old men are rumbled before they are ridiculed by an absurdly forgiving wife (Gladys Cooper). Not exactly millennial in its attitudes, then, but urbanely wistful entertainment for the nostalgic male.
Country: GB
Technical: col 100m
Director: Harold French
Cast: Moira Shearer, John Justin, Roland Culver, Harry Andrews, Kenneth More (as narrator)
Synopsis:
A viscount in the diplomatic service goes through life obsessed with the form of his first love, and leads a double existence so that he can woo every girl who reminds him of her.
Review:
Based on Rattigan's play "Who Is Sylvia?", this Wildean exercise in Bunburying, with Justin as Algernon and Culver as Jack Worthing, sparkles in the first reel but becomes bogged down in contrivances aimed at showcasing the star's terpsichorean skills. The extract from Sleeping Beauty is a notable intrusion, all the more because Miss Shearer's talent for light comedy is self-evident from the off, and by far the best thing in it. The colour is smudgy, the direction brisk but undistinguished, and by the time the plot unravels we have moved from camp waspishness ('She'll be better off on her back' - 'Well, quite') to a rather depressing accommodation with reality, as the two old men are rumbled before they are ridiculed by an absurdly forgiving wife (Gladys Cooper). Not exactly millennial in its attitudes, then, but urbanely wistful entertainment for the nostalgic male.
Country: GB
Technical: col 100m
Director: Harold French
Cast: Moira Shearer, John Justin, Roland Culver, Harry Andrews, Kenneth More (as narrator)
Synopsis:
A viscount in the diplomatic service goes through life obsessed with the form of his first love, and leads a double existence so that he can woo every girl who reminds him of her.
Review:
Based on Rattigan's play "Who Is Sylvia?", this Wildean exercise in Bunburying, with Justin as Algernon and Culver as Jack Worthing, sparkles in the first reel but becomes bogged down in contrivances aimed at showcasing the star's terpsichorean skills. The extract from Sleeping Beauty is a notable intrusion, all the more because Miss Shearer's talent for light comedy is self-evident from the off, and by far the best thing in it. The colour is smudgy, the direction brisk but undistinguished, and by the time the plot unravels we have moved from camp waspishness ('She'll be better off on her back' - 'Well, quite') to a rather depressing accommodation with reality, as the two old men are rumbled before they are ridiculed by an absurdly forgiving wife (Gladys Cooper). Not exactly millennial in its attitudes, then, but urbanely wistful entertainment for the nostalgic male.