Departamento de soltero

Clearly a lesser known entry in the 'Angry Young Man" Brit flick dramas of the early 60s. Like This Sporting Life, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, Look Back in Anger et al, it's all generational conflict and post war miserabilism.

This new realism wore itself out as the 60s really took hold and for many, things did change and improve. Perhaps the young lead Alfred Lynch didnt make it as Harris or Finney did, but he sustained a career over decades. Here he is supported by some stalwarts of British cinema (Kathleen Harrison, Eric Portman and Finlay Currie) and even the poor young actress (Kathleen Breck) saddled with the role of 'tart' which says everything about the double standard of the time and nothing about the character herself. But as is so often the case, the standout for talent and charisma is the much missed Diana Dors.

Despite her Rank charm school beginnings, her natural acting talent easily makes the most of the ever so slightly ageing good time girl role she has. Her charisma makes her the most compelling of all the players. Star quality that never left her.

Its not great, but its worth a watch, if only as a reasonably authentic period piece. The Director Michael Winner had more commercial success, but this may be as a good a film as he ever made.

It's very interesting, made before the 'swinging sixties' but just after the 'kitchen sink' this was Winner's first significant film although his first had been Play it Cool (1962) staring Billy Fury and Helen Shapiro. Keith Waterhouse worked on the script which is really good and most of the location around Notting Hill Gate. There are some shots around London especially Kensington Gardens and even a great view of Kenwood House in the snow. Much of the scenes are in the snow which I seem to remember in that very cold winter. As the story begins an ex-army officer tries to get the young guy to bump off his old aunt to get her money. (When he first meets him to try and tell him his plan it is in a Wimpy!) We later see him go to Paddington and even down to Corfe Castle in Dorset and the killing attempt is short but rather thrilling. Winner really does do well here and only about 28. I think it looks as there was only one scene in the studio although I'm not sure about the party and dance scenes although we even see Una Stubbs, probably her first film as she's on her knees at a party and a glimpse of Mike Leigh. There is much more than a glimpse, well about 60 seconds and no talking and no mention in the credits but we clearly see David Hemmings as a young hoodlum. Great fun.

A minor but very smoothly made example of British film noir. Director Michael Winner, then at the start of his career, had a strong cast (Alfred Lynch, Eric Portman, Diana Dors, Finlay Currie, et al) to inhabit this starkly photographed little crime melodrama set in London bedsit-land, all tacky Notting Hill coffee bars and smoky jazz clubs.

Lynch makes a downbeat but sympathetic protagonist, more thoughtful than the usual type of hero. Portman plays the clipped-moustache ex-military man-turned-swindler to perfection. Dors is just right, too, as a blousy divorcée ("Young enough to still want a husband; old enough not get the one I want").

Winner plays up the salacious sex element a bit, but a tight Keith Waterhouse/Willis Hall script touches on Lynch's Catholic guilt, and Currie's existential search for 'truth', just enough to give the story a modicum of depth. There's also an evocative score by Stanley Black, with Acker Bilk on sax.

Until latterly a neglected, even scorned, cinema sub-genre, these usually low-budget British film noirs, often superbly photographed, were violent by the standards of their day, and showed the rain-washed streets of cities like Newcastle (Payroll), Manchester (Hell Is a City) and Brighton (Jigsaw), as well as London, could be pretty mean, too.

Winner's next film, The System with Oliver Reed, was even better.

While trying to create a stylish British film noir, Michael Winner unwittingly created an existentialism masterpiece! Only those armed with such expectations will feel that their time is not wasted. Those expecting kitchen sink drama or noir will very probably yawn throughout.

As such, acting in this movie serves its purpose and helps open up the world of boredom, hope and individual aspirations and disappointments. Nicely shot, slowly-paced and with a decent period music deployed to show adequately gloomy passtime activities of the W11 youth and pub-goers of the early 60's, the film satisfies all the criteria required for it to fit into the existentialism category.

This low-key British kitchen-sink movie is much better than it's lukewarm reputation might suggest. It's no masterpiece and it's certainly no "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" or "A Taste of Honey" but it's far from negligible and is worth seeing. It was directed by Michael Winner at a time when he actually made good films and stars the underrated Alfred Lynch as a feckless young man roped into a murder plot by Eric Portman's slimy and possibly bogus ex-army officer. Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall wrote the above average screenplay and it's superbly shot in its Notting Hill locations by Otto Heller. Others in a fine supporting cast include Diana Dors, Kathleen Harrison and Finlay Currie.