A Day to Remember

I don't give many films an "8" but I have for ADTR. It was a very well-constructed film with several worthy sub-plots - albeit several were predictable - and excellent scenes of Boulogne.

All the actors performed well, notably Odile Versois and her "grandmother" with some significant facial expressions conveying far more than words. It was interesting to see Edward Chapman in a sympathetic role, and Bill Owen was excellent.

The only character who struck a poor note was that played by Stanley Holloway, aged 62 when the film was released, whose ogling of women seems very sad - almost offensive - in the politically-correct 2020s.

Certainly not a comedy, but with some light-handed humour, such as Harry Fowler's comeuppance and James Hayter having fun. In contrast the scene in the war cemetery is poignant.

A minor classic.

This film is very similar to Innocents In Paris.Both films have a similar concept.A group of English males going to a foreign country,France,and having various adventures,which in each case entails one of the group falling in love.The problem is that by and large the stories aren't particularly interesting in themselves.indeed the most laughable story concerns Bill Owen who decides to enlist in the foreign legion because everybody calls him shorty.There is a brief reference back to the women at home.Donald Sinden's girlfriend finds him too straitlaced so she teams up with a GI who will take her dancing.Sinden meanwhile is romancing a Frech girl.It is all very forgettable.incidentally watch Stanley Holloways headgear.At one time he is wearing a white floppy hat and then without warning it changes into a beret.

A slight but good-natured collection of individual stories similar to the same year's 'Innocents in Paris'; with a cheerful score by Clifton Parker.

Although basically played for laughs, Donald Sinden gets to play probably the nearest thing he ever did to a romantic lead; an experience that doubtless explains him recalling it as "a delightful film" in his memoirs.

This film doesn't seem to be available on Youtube so I shall have to wait to refresh my memory of it until it appears one fine night or day out of peak hours on goodness knows what channel. But what I can remember of it I remember with fondness. I consider it a minor gem of early post-war British cinema.

The War, and there is still only one war which we call the War, had not been long over after the time the film was set and produced and it does, from what I remember, reproduce that attitude of Little England, and Little Englanders, and a sense of England in the best sense of the phrase which has now disappeared. The two stories which are strong is Bill Owen so smarting from an inferiority complex he joins the Foreign Legion, and that would have made a good sequel in itself, and the heart warming story of Bill Sinden as the young veteran who finally finds himself and his heart through returning to France and encountering a lovely French girl - a dream for many Englishmen then and now! I believe the story ends with the organiser of the trip complaining that next year the annual Pub Trip will stay safely on the English side of the Channel! Vive La France and Vive L'Angleterre!

This was billed as a "comedy" when it was shown on Channel 4, and I watched it thinking I would see something of a period I am not quite old enough to remember clearly. However the few humorous elements in the film either fall flat or turn out to be not so funny after all. Worse, the gently amusing idea of a darts team from London on a day trip to Boulogne is interrupted far too often and for too long by the romance between the two main characters (played by Donald Sinden and Odile Versois), which is not only highly improbable but also very badly acted. Stanley Holloway is hardly any better, sleepwalking his way through yet another cheerful Cockney chappie character. The only actor who stands out is a young Bill Owen, who alone among the darts players sees the trip as a way to escape from his miserable life (though, again, not in a particularly amusing way).

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the film is that, while the Londoners are generally one-dimensional and uninteresting (repeating "We must stick together!" when in fact they do the reverse), the French are quite sympathetic and believable; I even felt sorry for the somewhat pompous M. Dubot towards the end.