A Boy, a Girl and a Bike

When John McCallum's roadster damages Honor Blackman's bicycle, he takes a liking to the mill girl. However, this annoys her boyfriend, Patrick Holt.

There are a lot of subplots in this story about a Yorkshire bicycling club, and a lot of handsome trucking shots of its members, particularly the ladies from behind, especially eighteen-year-old Diana Dors. the Yorkshire town and its environs are beautifully shot by DP Ray Elton, recently graduated from documentary shorts. He would later become a documentary producer.

Mostly though, it comes off as a paean to post-war prosperity. Like the Huggetts series, it's about the dances and bicycling and good times, now that the war was past, even as Miss Blackman's father wrangles with his mother-in-law about his sweets rations and control of the radio dial. the times are changing, and even though McCallum's parents are old-fashioned and snobby, his interest in Miss Blackman smacks of a new, classless society. Anyway, it's fresh-faced, 24-year-old Honor Blackman, best remembered now for being a Bond Girl and for THE AVENGERS.

Quite a nice film about a long lost past which although sombre for those without much money, was socially rich and enjoyable. Pursuits were predominantly outdoors (no TV), and the Saturday night dances. Others have commented about Diana Dors in this film. I personally thought that the then 22 year old Honor Blackman was the belle of the film, with a passable local accent.

The film has a somewhat rushed ending, with some plot lines not being resolved, while others are brought to fruition. For me, another ten minutes to better resolve the ending would have helped. This is a shame - perhaps the producers ran out of money or a key cast member had other commitments elsewhere?

Didn't Diana Dors look so nice before they dyed her hair and made her into some kind of English Monroe? She reminded me of a very young Lana Turner here. And John McCallum. Whoa, boy! Plenty of nice shots of him in those little shorts and bathers raised my rating of this up to a 9. This film isn't really "a" boy, "a" girl or "a" bike, it's many. Ada and her many admirers, Charlie and his Ginger, Susie and her Sam and David, vying for her affections.. There seemed to be a few minor plots going on before they struck the big one - Charlie being in debt and stealing a bike to cover it, naturally he steals one with unique brake wires that is easily identifiable, naturally David buys said bike and everything ends up pear-shaped - but it's definitely a lot of fun to watch!

I try to be objective with my marks for the films I occasionally review on this website, but on this occasion my vote of 9 comes from the heart. The film came out in 1949, just ten years before I started cycling, but it evokes a bygone age,when the postwar roads were free of traffic and cycling was carefree (even if the industrial settings and living conditions portrayed in the film were grim). The film struck a further chord with me because like its hero I came from a posh background and my family frowned on me mixing with those common rough types. It's a gentle film of a long-lost age - even though it starts with what today what would be a road-rage incident - McCallum hoots aggressively at the club run as he motors along, only then for him to stall his car and to be gently mocked by the cyclists as they overtake him; today such an incident would provoke swearing if not physical contact.

The race at the film's end is well-staged, though at a cyclists' filmshow some years ago the close-ups of the competitors against back projection provoked much mirth (but then comparable shots of horse-riders also look artificial in old films, with the riders bouncing up-and-down on saddles in the studio).

Like RitaRisque in her preceding review, I too thought a young Diana Dors looked very nice, as did Honor Blackman. And the supporting cast is a delight for those of us who like to spot British character actors.

When I first learned during the early seventies that Honor Blackman had starred in something called 'A Boy, a Girl and a Bike', my fevered young imagination had conjured up a fetishistic Kenneth Anger-like fantasy or an erotic drama like 'Girl on a Motorcycle'. But 'The Wild One' this ain't.

This was actually the only feature film produced by documentary maker Ralph Keene, shot on location in North Yorkshire with the youthful Miss Blackman struggling with a northern accent as a mill worker who spends her weekends in shorts on a bicycle rather than in leather straddling a Harley-Davidson.

The film makes the tiny workers' homes (through the windows of which it always seems to be night and there are chimneys perpetually belching out smoke) look painfully cramped, lacking in privacy, and just the sort of places from which to escape into the Dales at every possible opportunity.

It's a measure of the film's incredible age that Blackman was still sweet and demure in those days, and that the Bad Girl is a plump, pouting young Diana Dors ("built for pleasure", as one fellow observes).