Glad Tidings!

Not that great but still a pleasant 90 minutes if you fancy an agreeable film. The other critics have been rather unfair. The film is very much of its kind and must be watched with that viewpoint. I have seen a lot worse.

There's an academic paper in the films produced after the war by the late Victor Hanbury.

From 'Daughter of Darkness' (1948) to 'The Sleeping Tiger' (1954) he evidently had a penchant for commissioning heated melodramas with largely female casts in which bottled-up passions well up and collide with skeletons in the closet of postwar British life while the men tend rather gormlessly to be largely oblivious of the emotional heat reaching boiling point around them.

Raymond Huntley has problems. Not only has the Air Force commandeered the 13th green of his golf club, but his long-simmering relationship with American Barbara Kelly has reached the boiling point. While his children were young, they had maintained a discreet relationship. Now that they have grown up, the time has come for them to get married. However the children are still adamantly opposed to her.

Although all the performers do their best with their roles, this movie, based on a play by R.F. Delderfield has an essential problem: there's no real reason for the youngsters to object to Miss Kelly except for the demands of the plot. the result is that they are all at least slightly nasty, even as they are engaged in their own love affairs. One is carrying on with a married man, another has fallen for Corporal Ronald Howard, who doesn't earn enough money.... matters like that. Of course, it's all up to Miss Kelly to sort matters out, even as they protest at her interference.

It's Wolf Rilla's first movie as a director; he also wrote the screenplay, opening it up a bit from the play. He cannot, however, do much to deal with the rote issues and the stereotyped and unlikeable characters.

I have seen Raymond Huntley in many types of roles.Normally portraying a figure of authority.Often in the wartime as memorable nasty Nazis.However i have never seen him ,as in this film,a romantic lead.If you have the opportunity to see this on Performance satellite TV see if you think that he is a likely partner to Bernard Braden's real life wife Barbara Kelly.To be honest never in a million years.A more unlikely couple you could never be likely to see in a month of Sundays.There are lots of familiar character actors from the 1950s such as Leslie Howards brother Ronald.The story is rather insubstantial and is of the sort that helped close hundreds of cinemas.

Originally, apparently this was a stage play, unfortunately not the same principals were cast in this film version. I think during the run of a successful play, the cast both individually and as a ensemble develop the characters and their performances for best effect. The supporting cast, the well knowns and not so well knowns are fine, Ronald Howard indeed was something of a star. The problem was the lack of believability and suitability of the two principals.

At the time of filming Raymond Huntley was 49, Barbara Kelly 29. Huntley seems old in manner for his years and plays his accustomed stuffy authority figure (usually senior solicitor, civil servant etc). There is no hint of his being interested in younger women, or reasons why they should be in him. He was not an actor who could make the situation believable - or amusing. Barbara Kelly as his wife plays a steam-rollering foil to his stuffiness, bursting his pomposity and narrow-mindedness in front of the children and their newly acquired RAF boyfriends. The film closes with laughter from all - which neither what had preceded it justified, nor the prospects for the mis-matched marriage.

*watched on "Talking Pictures" Freeview Channel 81 new (since Sept 2015) UK 24 hour old film only TV channel