Quiet Weekend

The charm in this film lies in its simplicity. Based on a stage play, it shows a middle class family staying at their weekend cottage, leading the easy type of life that has sadly long since disappeared. The highlights of this film are the dreadful concert and the poaching expedition.

A real old fashioned gem.

Obviously low budget but well compensated with good crisp direction and characterisation.

Nothing nasty - even the upper class snob was almost likeable.

A slice of English middle class probably gone forever.

Based on a play it is no too stagebound.Frank Cellier for once does not play a villain.The only real problem is who on earth would have a crush on Derek Farr.Only a lovstruck 18 year old.

Another effortlessly charming ensemble British comedy about a deliciously erudite group of middle-class city slickers whose blissfully bucolic sojourn in their politely ramshackle country abode very soon impolitely turns into a splendidly silly series of splendiferous larks, pratfalls, misadventures, and wonderfully barbed badinage! 'Quiet Weekend' is thankfully never twee, wholesomely funny, undeniably edifying fare, being divinely nostalgic fun, no less crisply satisfying than a freshly cut cucumber sandwich, frequently frothier than a barrel of ginger beer, feisty familial intrigues, burgeoning love affairs, petty jealousies, rain-drenched picnics, and pulse-pounding bouts of midnight Salmon poaching, 'Quiet Weekend' is a far from sedate affair, an enormously good-natured, decidedly classy comedy that is bound to revivify one's flagging spirits like the bracing mustard-infused baths so blithely prescribed by the likeable Royd family's preternaturally capable matriarch Mildred Royd (Marjorie Fielding).

For anyone born in the UK before about 1935 (as I was) this movie will bring back memories of austerity, such as very few cars and very little food and primitive plumbing. We all had to make do with what we had; the top rate of income tax was around 95%. Nevertheless the middle classes had those delicious cut-glass English accents; "thanks" was pronounced "thenks". The lower classes such as the old poacher, spoke their lines in broad accents and were usually considered to be comic characters.

That has all changed now. This movie is good entertainment but also of value to the social historians. It is the way the British coped with the rigors of victory after WW II, i.e. paying off the huge loans owed to the USA while trying to become a socialist society.