Les Années dangereuses

I love watching old films,especially old British films.they show our cities as they were and it is fun to see star actors in their early years. Sometimes the films are good and it is great to find an undiscovered classic.

But I hate to agree with the only other review here of this film. It is interesting in locations and actors but is not great as a film. This is a Liverpool set kitchen sink sort of drama. I give no plot spoilers but it is fairly predictable.

The cast is interesting,Frankie Vaughan is the star,he is handsome but his musical numbers feel dated . Carole Lesley is the female lead,she is beautiful but I don't recall seeing her in anything else. It is Liverpool set but don't expect strong regional accents in 1957.

This is the first time that I have watched this obscure 1957 film. Most of the National Service conscripts appear far too old for the 18+ years they would have been, I know because I was a National Service sapper from 1954 to 1956. However, the uniforms are correct. Anna Neagle as producer has done a poor job of this Liverpool-based drama. There are lots of well-known British actors that must have been short of work at the time to accept roles in this film. The continuity is weak. Frankie Vaughan's acting is awful. I wouldn't want to watch it again, despite a nice view of the 1957 Ford Consul and the beautiful, but tragic, Carole Lesley.

I saw Frankie Vaughn in 42nd Street and he was great.Sadly when it came to films ou he couldn't act his way outt of a paper bag.The tragic Carole Lesley was beautiful but had no acting talent so couldn't sustain her career.The script is full of cliches.Wilcox and Neagle have lost touch with their core audience.As a result the film is of no real interest.

Supposedly about delinquent youth from Liverpool (not that you'd know from the accents) and produced by Anna Neagle (who didn't actually submit to the indignity of appearing in it).

Although Vaughan's enormous popularity as a singer incredibly made this "a great success" in it's day according to Dame Anna, this grisly attempt to make a British Elvis out of nice young Frankie Vaughan - despite superb photography by Gordon Dines - is as unwatchable today as Herbert Wilcox's previous films with Errol Flynn.

Why is everyone attacking Anna Neagle, yes her production company made it, which means Anna signed the cheques, the film is written by Jack Trevor Story, who in all honesty is a better novelist than screen writer, and Herbert Wilcox directed the film, and the film isn't as bad as the reviews here, if you wanted to see an information film on Britains National Service then watch one, but this is a film made for entertainment, and it does just that. Frankie Vaughan was a singer, not a trained actor, so yes he struggled with the dialogue sometimes or what to do with his hands, but please don't attack him or the other performers, they don't deserve it.