It's a Wonderful World

Terence Morgan and George Cole are a couple of songwriters who can't sell anything. After they make friends with beautiful, blonde Mylène Demongeot, with whom they share a clothes line, their record player breaks down and starts to play backwards. Convinced that all anyone wants these days is gimmicks, they invent a fictional composer and sell a backwards piece to music publisher James Hayter. As their relationship with each other and Mlle Demongeot collapses, their fictional composer's work takes the highbrow music scene by acclamation.

The big star in this movie is Ted Heath -- the band leader, not the Prime Minister -- who was near the peak of his popularity at this time. Some of the musical numbers are excellent, an attempt to produce a British musical on the order of Hollywood's stuff -- although one performance is choreographed like a Technicolor version of a Busby Berkeley piece from twenty years earlier. Third-billed Katheen Harrison is the screechy landlady for the boys, Jon Pertwee has a funny turn as a conductor, and Mlle Memongeot is fresh-faced and cute; I was surprised, as I was more accustomed to seeing her strapped to a ship's prow, trying to look sexy.

This film essentially harks back to the 40's and early 50's when big bands ruled the airwaves of popular music together with ballad singers like Denis Lotis and his ilk. However, by 1956, when this film was released, this type of easy listening music was being swept away by more exciting and vibrant sounds of rock 'n' roll. It was great to see the great band leader Ted Heath, but this film, even in 1956 must have had a very dated feel about it when it hit the cinemas, since teenagers had begun to buy, listen and dance to a completely different type of music! The story line about two music composers who hit upon the idea of playing music backwards, hoping it would prove to be a commercial success was frankly daft. George Cole and Terence Morgan are ill suited as the 'young men' thirsting for musical success, as they look like two very dull, middle - aged men in suits, who are totally unconvincing in their roles. The songs featured are lifeless and the dialogue is tedious! It might be ok to watch this film on a cold, rainy afternoon for purely reasons of nostalgia!

Val Guest's black & white dramas of the fifties invariably outclassed his films in colour, of which this is probably the most tolerable.

In order to compensate for bandleader Ted Heath's woodenness playing himself the rest of the film is rather frantically farcical; with a mildly satirical plot making the usual digs at long-haired fuddy duddies and Harold Lang playing an effete music critic.

George Cole overacts wildly, a plot strand resembles Lt. Kije and above all there's a bizarre dream sequence. All in Spectascope and Technicolor to remind you that you wouldn't get any of this on TV.