BryanLindop

This film appears to be aplauded by its own countrymen and derided by everyone else. I can only say, as an Englishman that I agree with my French counterparts! This film for me was a delightful surprise! It has to be viewed within the context in which it was made and anyone who thinks that the musical numbers are poor has really missed the point! The film captures in scenes of wonderfully absurd comedy, a rehearsal for a french revue in a second rate variety theatre. It was great fun to see Loius de Funes in an early supporting role, but I particularly like the whole feel of the film. At its most realistic, it really captures the feeling of being there in the theatre while chaos rules the rehearsal.

Many of the pieces are hilariously funny, not least the bathing hut scene on the beach and the monks finale piece. For anyone who cringes at the nudity, I was delighted to find it all left in, realistically and is it should be! Also nice to see Agfacolour, though I have to confess that the print I saw was a slightly faded Eastman colour print form my own archive. Never-the-less, a delight and one to be accepted for what it is. It is a delightful time capsule period piece and I loved it!

I absolutely adore old British pictures and particularly the films of the 30's, 40's and 50's. This one came as something of a surprise, more so in that I had never seen it before. I expected something that would be extremely creaky and rather dull, but on the contrary I found it to be quaintly dated, nicely done and delightfully corny in the nicest possible way! (Entertainingly amusing, rather than ridiculously laughable.)

It is extremely atmospheric and when the sound is at it's best, the dialogue is superbly recorded. The male voices particularly have great presence and a surprising degree of base level in this Variable Density track. The script is good too and not afraid to be tongue in cheek when required, which gives it an extra lift.

Overall however, the recording quality does vary considerably and the picture has a very wide dynamic range, which presumably depended to some degree on where the microphones were situated in the long shots and the scenes with multiple actors in them, which were rather quiet and 'distant'.

Overall however, this is a well done crime picture which has many elements, no loose ends and an absorbingly engaging quality, with eerie lighting, performances which are convincing and not too stilted like a great many other pictures of the same period, and a nice mystery element to it.

The ending is perhaps just a shade obvious and slightly disappointing, but overall, compulsive viewing. The film is particularly nicely edited, but then it would be, since the film editor was David Lean and he was very good at his craft. All in all a nice little discovery for anyone that is into this sort of thing. I may in retrospect have overdone the voting, but I gave it 6 out of 10 for it's high level of overall quality, despite the constraints of it's early vintage.