Uno straniero a Cambridge

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.

German exchange student (Hardy Kruger) comes to the fictional University College, Cambridge. A collection of stereotypical but enjoyable Varsity capers ensue. Sylvia Syms is positively radiant - the proverbial English Rose. She has a knack for bringing the film to life whenever she appears on screen. The remainder of the players form a very predictable bunch of undergrads in their mid-twenties and profs in ttheir mid-eighties. Lovely views of the City, and one or two well orchestrated set-pieces (the raid on all-female college Girton is notable) make this effortless viewing.

Wolf Rilla did his best with this film, but it ended up looking like a fluffy cake in the shape of Cambridge, well beyond its sell by date. A few years earlier it may have worked but by 1958 it appeared still looking pretty visually but stale. John Osborne had written ' Look Back in Anger ' and from America ' Blackboard Jungle ' and ' Rebel Without A Cause ' had shaken up the insides of schools. But here in this meandering film the relentless high jinks of privileged youth and secret ceremonies still reigned causing mock havoc. Throwing Hardy Kruger as an exchange student in a mock execution into the relentlessly punting river was still ' fun ' and as the British take a long time in growing up it may still continue. Sylvia Syms is utterly wasted as Kruger's girlfriend ( not that much chemistry showed ) and Ronald Lewis tried to be funny as a fellow student but they all must have known that there was very little to do with their roles. The one plot highlight was Kruger on a hunting search for women for his fellow students to take to a ball, and that should have been cut out or shortened. It was boring and sexist and the ultimate insult was that the ' girls ' once rounded up like cattle seemed to like their moronic companions. I dreaded a joke about the Germans and ' the War ' but Rilla fortunately avoided that, and I give it a 5 for showing a boringly normal German, unlike the usual stereotyped Germans in the endless War heroics cluttering up the British film industry. For that one important element the film was refreshing.