A Man's Affair

A pair of young Welsh miners (Hamish Menzies and Cliff Gordon) are having an holiday on the Kent coast at Ramsgate where they meet two girls (Diana Decker and Joan Dowling). What ensues is the usual, will they won't they series of scenarios - the girls being more middle class - with plenty of misunderstandings, mishaps and some good old fashioned romance for an hour. There are very slight comments about social mobility contained within the script, but mostly it's a light hearted, throw-away drama that reminds us of holidays before people could head to the sunshine for less cost than staying at home.

It's a hamfisted, imitation Bronte post world war two romantic drama! Poor chap, classy lady, love, confusion and in the final act... hope! Beautiful 24 year old Diana Decker steals the show, for two reasons: She's the best looking person on the screen and the only one that can really act! It's only an hour long, so it's over before it gets too annoying! The always busy Wallas Eaton hams it up as the spiv, Leonard. There's a good copy of this on YouTube.

Hamish Menzies is holidaying at Ramsgate, enjoying the funfair with his pal when he runs into Diana Decker -- quite literally, they're in bumper cars -- and they fall into real but still cool love. He tells her he is a student. That's a lie. He's a coal miner. He knows very well that sensible English girls don't want to marry someone in that dead-end situation.

The leads are pleasant, but in main it's a "will they or won't they?" romantic comedy. Even so,there are a few nice points. Most obvious is the issue of class mobility. It's not a matter of the brutish and low-born Heathcliff yearning for the high-born Catherine. Aspiration and fear divide a seemingly infinite number of classes, yawning chasms unnoticed by anyone not living on their divides. By the end of the next decade it would become a standard of British stage and film, and in another ten years, fit for Monty Python's burlesque.

The other point worth noting is the recording of Ramsgate in this period. Blackpool has been shown on film many times, if only in versions of HINDLE WAKES, but the Ramsgate setting is far less usual. They make this worth watching.