The Wild and the Willing

This film is well worth a look despite it having some weaknesses that stop it from truly being a memorable film. Strangely, the greatest weakness this film has is its central plotline, that being the affair with Harry Brown and the professor's wife. This comes across as melodramatic and somewhat forced while the rest of the film is realistic and absorbing.

Ian McShane's debut film has him playing a scholarship university student, Harry Brown, who has a high opinion of himself and comes unstuck by taking too many risks.

As a plot, The Wild and the Willing is dated and a bit forced, but the interest these days is in the cast - top billed are Paul Rogers and the ill-fated Virginia Maskell, but we also have McShane (best known these days for Lovejoy and Deadwood), John Hurt (here not really displaying the qualities he would in The English Civil Servant, The Elephant Man, and 1984), Johnny Briggs (Coronation Street's Mike Baldwin), and Jeremy Brett (probably the screen's best Sherlock Holmes).

So the film is watchable and has interest because of its cast, but it isn't really a classic. If you like the usual story of shenanigans at university with a macabre twist, then you'll probably like this. If not, just enjoy some youthful performances from actors you'll know much better from their later work.

Christmas Day 2016 was the first time I saw this film despite my 70 years of age.Was this because British TV networks did not consider this film had enough popular appeal?I enjoyed seeing a young Ian McShane(Lovejoy), Samantha Eggar, John Hurt. Johnny Briggs, (Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street), Jeremy Brett, David Sumner the latter of whom I had not seen since he played Patrick Sullavan in the mid sixties long running t.v.series "The Sullavan Brothers".As to the plot of university students who never seem to do any study but spend their time larking around even finding time to have an affair with a tutor's wife; I found unconvincing.Every undergraduate I have met are kept busy studying their subject, going to tutorials and lectures, writing essays if they are serious using tax payers money, (remember this is 1962 and one could study at University then at the tax payers expense) to fund their study.Even though this was filmed in 1962 which is now 54 years ago, the actors still looked too old!

The script was variable and I awarded this film 6/10 as above average.

I wanted to see the movie because of Samantha Eggar, very young here, before the movies that made me fall in love with her, "The Collector" and "The Walking Stick". But she has just a small, unrepresentative role. Ralph Thomas made later "Deadlier Than the Male"(1967), a film that I saw many times and that I really liked when I was just a teenager. In this "Young and Willing" (1962) we have also a very young Ian McShane, discovered by me also when I was a teenager in "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" (1969). The revelation of this film is Virginia Maskell, excellent in the role of a woman who's married to a man who loves her in his own way, without giving her sex. Paul Rogers is also very good in the role of that man, her husband, a professor. A very very young and unrecognizable John Hurt, in the role of Ian McShane's colleague, who dies falling from the Lincoln tower. Not bad, but neither a masterpiece.

Ian McShane (in his screen debut) is a brilliant student who makes friends easily among his peers, but has no respect for the university. He makes passes at his master's wife, indulges in pranks, and thoroughly resents the hidebound attitudes of the class-ridden institution. But is it their snobbery or his?

Producer Betty Box has gifted director Ralph Thomas with an astonishing troupe of young performers, including John Hurt (also in his big-screen debut), Jeremy Brett, and Samantha Eggar. Thomas has responded by offering a very workmanlike screen adaptation of Laurence Dobie & Robert Sloman's play, opened up nicely, with Lincoln standing in for the fictional academic town. Thomas' typically middle-brow work doesn't offer much in the way of surprising revelation, save that the lower classes must pull up their socks as well and the upper set. Still, the performances are melancholic, Lincoln is very photogenic, and the story of a man who grows up a little too late is a good one.