Odeio o Meu Passado

The stunning Eastmancolor photography of Ernest Steward, Acker Bilk's swanky Jackie Gleason like score, (particularly the lush main theme) and location shooting in London, do much to distinguish this cautionary tale of a young woman treading down the well worn primrose path.

Janet Munro convinces as a the naive Welsh rustic, ("Jennie Jones") after La Dolce Vita, to which end she tosses decency aside, and heads to the big city, in her pursuit of a theatrical career. That her career is only to be that of "kept woman" is the discovery leading to the titular harvest.

Performances are all very apt, (particulary Francis Matthews, who nails the characterization of a louche libertine)and Director Peter Graham Scott certainly keeps our interest.

But just when one is most absorbed, most ready to watch Jennie's world unravel, the film ends, and one comes away feeling slightly cheated, with the sense that this MIGHT have been a great film, with a running time of 30 more minutes.

Still, it invites and deserves consideration alongside "Darling," and "Taste of Honey," as films that were also exploring unsavoury misfits in swinging 60's Great Britain.

Of course this film is dated. Why else watch it? The story is too ugly today. This is glossy and the characters and clothes lovely.

This film has a long beginning, no middle and a short ending. It is still well worth watching.

Jennie is a young pretty girl from a working class family. She lives in Wales which is made to look like the dreariest place on earth. She is dying to get to London. Eventually she does but it is not under the best circumstances.

Jennie lucks out. She meets caring and decent Bob, who goes to protect her. She lies and claims to be pregnant to garner more sympathy.

Janet Munroe was quite lovely and a very good actress. John Stride does a good job as the kind and patient man who falls in love with her,

How does it turn out? Does Jennie build a life with this devoted young man or does she risk it all for a chance at the limelight?

I don't know how I've missed this little gem. The terrific lost talent of Janet Munro and a whole host of top notch actors of the time like the acerbic Thora Hird and the tender John Stride give great performances here. The story is a natural successor to the gritty black and white Bryanston kitchen sink dramas of the late 50s early 60s. It sits well too with pre swinging 60s films like Alfie. A perfect snapshot of the social and sexual mores of the time. A special mention too for the beautiful colour cinematography and the evocative London locations. I don't think you'll be disappointed

This road-to-ruin melodrama is surprisingly watchable if you don't expect too much. The storyline is totally predictable, the characters little more than cliches, the colour lurid and I thought I detected some heavy-handed editing as 3rd-billed Alan Badell has only a few lines in a couple of scenes while uncredited Thora Hird (fresh from her triumph in "A Kind of Loving") has much more screentime as a grasping landlady.

A morality tale for the early sixties by the ever-enterprising Allied Filmmakers anticipating the journey taken by that year's headliner Christine Keeler and Julie Christie in 'Darling'.

This glossy Eastmancolor adaptation of the book by Patrick Hamilton is usually overlooked, but it provides a chance to savour the youthful beauty of the late lamented Janet Munro, who sadly like the heroine of this fable never lived to experience the fate she so feared of losing her youthful lustre as Miss Keeler certainly did.

Miss Munro might have found have found lasting happiness had she not unwisely favoured louche bounder Alan Badel over nice young John Stride, last seen courting good girl Anne Cunningham.