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"No Love for Johnnie" is that rarest of beasts, a film about British politics and, more over, a highly intelligent one though perhaps the biggest surprise is that this first-rate film came from the Betty Box/Ralph Thomas stable. This producer/director team were hardly noted for good, serious movie-making but they hit pay dirt here. Peter Finch is outstanding, (he won both a BAFTA and a Best Actor at Berlin), as the highly ambitious Labour MP whose extramarital affair could be his downfall though this isn't so much a film about sex and scandal as it is about the cut and thrust of British politics. Consequently it's a lot less melodramatic than it might have been. Finch dominates, (he's hardly ever off the screen), in a film that boasts an outstanding supporting cast, though to be fair, few others are given much of a chance to shine. This is Finch's film and it marked a huge step forward in bringing intelligent, adult fare into British cinemas in the early sixties.

1960's "No Love for Johnnie" was a straight political drama and a change of pace for director Ralph Thomas and producer Betty Box, becoming increasingly identified with comedies like "Doctor in the House" and its sequels. The film was adapted from the novel by Wilfred Feinburgh, a member of Parliament himself who died in an auto accident before its 1959 publication, Peter Finch playing Johnnie Byrne, reelected to Parliament with a greater majority for his Labour Party, quickly becoming disillusioned when passed over for a Cabinet position. This leads to a frankly far less interesting love affair with a young model half his age (Mary Peach), conveniently showing up after the departure of his Communist wife (Rosalie Crutchley). Add to this Billie Whitelaw as the upstairs neighbor pining for his affections, and a sinister looking Donald Pleasence as Roger Renfrew, leading an attempt to undermine Geoffrey Keen's Prime Minister by selecting Johnnie as the one to blow the whistle on a Middle Eastern coup before events play out in Britain's favor. Had the MP's predictably miserable love life not taken precedence over his political aspirations it might have made for something quite special, but it did earn Finch his third BAFTA Award, plus the Silver Bear for Best Actor at Berlin's 11th International Film Festival. The list of familiar faces features longtime veterans such as Dennis Price as a knowing photographer, Stanley Holloway, Mervyn Johns, George Rose, and Peter Sallis, to newcomers Mary Peach and an unbilled Oliver Reed, just off his starring debut in Hammer's "The Curse of the Werewolf," spotted at a party with a basket covering his head at the half hour mark.

`No Love for Johnnie' is an enjoyable political drama whose sub-plot concerns the doomed love affair between the main character and a much younger woman. The nature of this relationship is undermined by the fact that 42 year old Johnnie Byrne is played by handsome, virile Peter Finch whereas Mary Peach playing 20 looks nearer 30 and Byrne's job as an MP in a Labour government would presumably make him even more attractive - remember Henry Kissinger's remark about the aphrodisiac nature of power?

The film takes a conventionally cynical view of politics; the Labour cabinet is referred to as `a gang of lawyers and university lecturers' so nothing much has changed since 1961. I felt that there was one too many shots of the admittedly magnificent Palace of Westminster from the other bank of the Thames and I certainly could not see any reason for Cinemascope as the action is almost exclusively indoors.

Stanley Holloway, always good value, playing a fellow-MP acts as a sort of conscious to Byrne but see if you can spot Oliver Reed in one scene with a waste-paper basket over his head, even then a party animal! And the brilliant Billie Whitelaw turns a neighbour who is little more than a doormat into a fully rounded character.

Maybe the `red menace' lurking in the background dates `No Love for Johnnie' but I found it most involving.

No Love For Johnnie, I'm guessing did not have much of a release in the USA back when it was first made. Only political science students might grasped the significance of many of the happenings in this film. Of course that was before the BBC sent over its programs on our Public Network and we got a more humorous look at the UK's political system in Yes, Minister.

Peter Finch got one of his best screen roles in No Love For Johnnie as Johnnie Byrne recently re-elected Labour member of Parliament. He's got ambitions and he'll do whatever it takes to succeed, to get to the front benches where the Labour ministers sit when they're in power.

It's a tribute to Finch's talent as a player that he keeps so thoroughly dislikeable a person as Johnnie Byrne interested. He's got a wife, he's estranged from and a mistress he's cheating on also with yet another woman. The women in Finch's life respectively are Rosalie Crutchley, Billie Whitelaw and Mary Peach.

There's nothing he won't do, my favorite part of the film is when fellow back bench Labour ministers attempt a little palace coup against their Prime Minister, such people as Mervyn Johns and Donald Pleasance are involved. They have a script ready to follow and it's with Finch taking the lead. When the play is ready to commence, Finch is nowhere to be found, he's with Mary Peach delivering some constituent service. In fact their scenes, tame as they are today, would never have been in an American film of that era.

Actually Pleasance is also a really ruthless character himself, but apparently really dumb as well. I can't believe that what he was trying to do so totally depended on Finch in Parliament. I mean he couldn't have started the back bench revolt against Prime Minister Geoffrey Keen by improvising someone else to ask the pertinent questions. He gets back at Finch by raising some row with Finch's district constituents, that they almost give him a no confidence vote at a Labour Party district meeting. Imagine if we could do that here.

Stanley Holloway is another Labour minister, an older one who remembers Finch's parents who were right at the beginning of the founding of the Labour Party. He serves as the voice of integrity in the film. He alludes to some things that an American audience might not be aware of like the split during World War I which nearly wrecked the Labour Party during it's adolescence. An element of the party that Holloway apparently belonged to opposed British entry into World War I on pacifist grounds and some in fact did go to jail as conscientious objectors. One of those people who was a conscientious objector was James Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister. Others in the Labour Party like Arthur Henderson joined the Coalition government to support the war.

Whether you believed what a MacDonald or apparently Finch's parents did was right isn't really the point. What Holloway says is that back in the day people had real beliefs and acted on them. Finch's lack of commitment to anything other than his ambition is the worst thing about his character. Sounds like a lot of people I know today.

Finch got a BAFTA award which is the UK's equivalent of the Oscar for Best Actor. The film in its searing cynicism is years ahead of its time. I suggest it could be remade today and find a much wider audience than it did in 1961.

This film was made in 1961 during Harold MacMillan's premiership and about a year before the Profumo scandal broke.So much of what is shown in the film was reflected in contemporary life.Of course parliamentary scandals would get worse culminating in the expenses fiddle.Peter Finch is excellent.However there are two aspects of the film which don't ring true.Firstly Mary Peach running off back home.Secondly the motion of no confidence.I am sure that this would have been squashed by the head office,as such an unlikely move would cause major embarrassment to a new government.Incidentally the red scare was quite real at the time,as apart from the Profumo scandal a small number of Labour MPs had contacts with iron curtain countries.