Vigilia di nozze

Portmanteau films were popular in the forties.They generally had a common theme.In this film the theme is Bond Street..This is an upmarket street which runs south from Oxford Street.Lots of fashion shops are here.The first episode is set in such an establishment.The featured actress is Kathleen Harrison as a free-market who is waiting on the birth of her grandchild and is poorly treated by her employer.Only the presence of Harrison makes this watchable.The second episode features Jean Kent as a bit of a con artist..A robbery of a jewelers leads to murder.The.It gets very murderer makes her flat his hideout.However they end up in bed together.It gets very talky and rather silly.The third episode is set in an invisible mending shop..Kenneth Griffiths gives a typically nasty character who sponges off his wife and decides to up his game to blackmail..An enjoyable performance and that was it.The fourth episode features Roland Young..Robert Flemyng is about to get married when a former flame from Denmark arrives to stay with him for good..It is an amusing finale to a rather uneven film

I finally caught up with this film again on the recent, excellent DVD from Network, not having seen it since the late 1960s when it was shown on ITV.

It is not a great film by any means. The main reason for watching it today is the glimpse of fashionable Bond Street just after the war when it was still its Victorian self (today it's almost unrecognisable) and for the stream of famous British character actors, some credited but many not.

Roland Young came back from Hollywood for this and is as dapper and amusing as ever. He died 5 years later, much too soon, aged just 65.

Portmanteau films were (as others point out on this board) very popular in the 1940s. I believe the first one, TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942) which spawned the cycle, may have given Anatole DE Grunwald the idea for BOND ST. In the earlier TALES, the stories are all strung together by the fate of a formal evening suit and the people that own it. Its all-star cast included Edward G Robinson in one of his most subtle performances.

BOND STREET uses a wedding trousseau in much the same manner, but it cannot compete with a starry cast.

Yet it's still very entertaining and the location shots as I say, are quite wonderful.

The scene in the posh restaurant where, thanks to wartime rationing still being in force, only fish cakes are on the menu, is priceless.

A wallow in nostalgia that is well worth a look!

Producer Anatole de Grunwald evidently saw post-war Britain - with its crime, spivs and fallout from wartime romances - ripe for a portmanteau film in the style of Duvivier's 'Un Carnet de Bal' for his first solo production.

Unfortunately Duvivier himself wasn't around to direct this time, and despite input from Terence Rattigan and the presence of Roland Young it's all rather bland; apart from the tragic episode with Derek Farr & Jean Kent, enhanced by Otto Heller's photography and a harp score by Benjamin Frankel that anticipates Bernard Herrmann's for 'Vertigo' ten years later.

I always enjoy British films circa 1940s directed in the "Cholomdley-Warner" mold (Harry Enfield).This film reminded me of "Quartet, Trio & Encore", three short films based on stories by William Somerset Maugham."Bond Street" (1948), apart from the named obvious stars, interestingly has Ian Carmichael in a debut walk-on non speaking extra role, working in a high class fashion house in the premier shopping district of west London.

One scene in one of the three short films brought a tear to my eye.Hard working seamstress, Kathleen Harrison (in one of her typical working class roles), wants to have an hour off work to visit her very ill daughter in hospital but finds she cannot as a rich, haughty lady customer wants her dress ready that evening for an important engagement.The manageress tells Kathleen she will have to stay and finish the dress first so missing the hospital appointment.In a fit of pique Kathleen purposely then rips the dress.The audience sympathy however switches to the "haughty lady" when she informs Kathleen her important engagement is in fact an emotional reunion to see her son blinded at Arnhem (1944).When she learns about Kathleen's problems she becomes very sympathetic and takes her for a champagne drink and they become friends.The girls in the work room rally round Kathleen so she can make her hospital appointment to see her daughter.Kathleen also has good news once she arrives there and it all ends happily for her.

There are two other watchable films in this compilation DVD, one with Derek Farr and Jean Kent but I found the story line rather far fetched and it ended too suddenly.I consider my grading of 6/10 fair.

Worth it for the locations and the London atmosphere. Several stories are linked by Hazel Court's wedding. Who made her wedding dress, mended her veil, fixed her pearl necklace, sent her flowers?

Kathleen Harris is at the centre of the "wedding dress" segment, set in the sewing work room of a dress shop. Her daughter is having a baby, and in her distress she rips the dress she's altering. Her workmates (including Joan Hickson and Joan Dowling) rally round.

In the next segment, rather clunkily announced by a Pathe news type voiceover, Patricia Plunkett is an invisible mender, separated from her slimy husband, played by Kenneth Griffiths. He really puts on the best turn. Ron Howard turns up with a torn trouser-leg... (Patricia isn't great at sewing!)

Now we have the noir slice of life - Derek Farr shoots a man while robbing a jeweller's, and takes refuge with hard-faced street-walker Jean Kent. Farr was certainly versatile, and is quite frightening with dyed dark hair. Kent is a joy as always. They have a brief affair, but it's not going to end well.

I fast-forwarded over the last bit, which concerns Hazel Court's wedding and an unfortunate Danish entanglement who must be hastily repatriated to Scandinavia. She is a stereotype - horribly large and hearty, dressed in a "jelly-bag" hat.

Patricia Plunkett reprises her character from It Always Rains on a Sunday, while Kathleen Harrison tones down her usual shtick. Both of them are playing working-class characters. They convince, but why do they have to come over as half-witted? Perhaps Plunkett is supposed to be "sweet, innocent and trusting", and this is why she appeals to Ron Howard who is playing a lamb.

Harrison is by no means as half-witted as usual, but it still grates. They are at the end of a theatrical convention that sent up working-class characters. See the various actresses who have played the maid in Philomel Cottage/Love from a Stranger. (Including Joan Hickson.) See the maid in Blithe Spirit. Thank goodness kitchen-sink dramas came along in ten years or so.

Fashion in the years 1948-50 didn't change much from the war years - clothes became a bit more luxurious and fancy. For a full account read Eric Newby's Something Wholesale. (As a designer he survived the New Look.)