Bachelor of Hearts

With a screenplay by Leslie Bricusse and Frederic Raphael and terrific color photography by Geoffrey Unsworth, Wolf Rilla's "Bachelor of Hearts" is a one-of-a-kind grandiose sort of rom-com. Loaded with physical comedy, it's shot on location at Cambridge and provides an exaggerated look at the strange rituals and behavior of those upper class twits that Monty Python made such fun of a decade later.

International superstar Hardy Kruger is constantly the center of attention, providing an outsider's point-of-view mixing with his fellow students at Cambridge University. Sort of the steady center of the movie, Sylvia Syms plays his #1 romantic interest from a nearby Girls College, playing straight to Hardy no matter how outrageous his antics become.

Director Wolf Rilla (who made the classic "Village of the Damned"") pulls out all the stops, including documentary-style footage of the campus events with students as extras, and even mixes in plenty of sex comedy for Hardy to frantically execute. Among the many pretty girls in the cast is a fun turn by Barbara Steele, affecting a high-pitched goofy voice worthy of Carol Kane.

This seems to be a comic vehicle for Hardy Kreuger.The problems are that the script wasn't written that way and Kreuger is not much of a light comedian.There are a lot of views of Cambidge in the late fifties,but this is insufficient to maintain interest.Lots of familiar faces who would do better work in the more popular Doctor and Carry On films.

This had the bones of a good film but just disintegrated into a poor slap stick.

One thing is clear from the get-go in Bachelor of Hearts: In European films, Hardy Kruger was seen for the cutie-pie he was. Americans could rarely get over a German actor's nationality (hence why Curd Jurgens probably wasn't considered for The Sound of Music), so Hardy often played Nazis - and we wonder why he retired early. But when the films weren't geared primarily towards Americans, his characters were pretty hunky! In Bachelor of Hearts, he plays a German exchange student new to England and her customs during his first year at university. Immediately, he puts the moves on the first girl he sees, despite her already having a boyfriend, and she has to force herself to resist him. He's charming, he's adorable, and it's a shame America didn't get the memo.

If you're not in it for the eye candy, however, you shouldn't be in it at all. This is a very silly movie, akin to America's High Time, but without the seriousness of the adults. It's just a gigantic advertisement for parents not to pay for their kids' college educations. They take four years, all paid for by Mommy and Daddy, to party, sleep around, and participate in stupid hazing rituals. Hardly anyone knuckles down and wants to learn, as you can see in this movie. Even Hardy, bless his heart, gets criticized repeatedly when he tries to stick to his studies. One of his professors literally says, "You can read books in Germany." Instead, to truly get an education, he has to party, sleep around, and participate in stupid hazing rituals. However, the movie isn't a total bust. Hardy is extremely cute.

This is a quirky little movie with Hardy Kruger playing a young college graduate. Nice performance from Kruger in a sort of Brian Rix farce at the end when he is trying to entertain several girls - the reason why he is doing this escapes me at the moment. This is very much in the vain of the Ealing comedies - don't try to find the hidden depths there aren't any. Just go along with it and enjoy. Hardy Kruger is very popular with English audiences - he fits in well with our vision of the likeable German. Obviously his main claim to fame is the aircraft designer in "Flight of the Phoenix", but he has appeared in several war movies over the years.