CINEMA
Something Money Can't Buy. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—Castles in the Air. (Plaza.) IT is grievous to report that the two new films on view this week are both nearly as bad as films can be, and that they are, alas, both British. Something Money Can't Buy, the less dire of the two, relates how a young couple, Mr. Anthony Steel and Miss Patricia Roc, having lorded it in style in post-war Germany, return to the queues, rationings and power-cuts of Civvy Street. Finding it hard to make both ends meet on his job at the Town Hall, Mr. Steel, with the help of a less than usually ga-ga Mr. A. E. Matthews, starts up a mobile-restaurant business. Miss Roc parks her babies, and opens a secretarial agency. Both these enterprises are successful, but, after the necessary marital misunderstandings, the woman gives up her job and returns to the supervision of nappies—very old- fashioned, but the clue, of course, to all happiness. Though it is ostensibly a frothy champagne-mixture, this film's bubbles rarely rise to the surface. It lacks the magic touch, and its potential effervescence never materialises. One merely gets the impression that a lot of worthy people are working hard to boil a recalcitrant kettle.
Castle in the Air is a comedy which concerns the efforts of an impoverished Scottish earl to sell his crumbling castle to an American heiress in the face of stern opposition from a representative of the Coal Board who wants to requisition it for a miners' home. Both the prospective buyers are visiting it at the same time, and Mr. David Tomlinson has to make it attractive to one and repulsive to the other. He is aided in his task by Miss Helen Cherry, and impeded by Miss Margaret Rutherford. The dilemma is amusing, but un4 fortunately the film is far from being so. It is, indeed, one of the scrappiest, clumsiest efforts it has been my lot to see, a wobbly edifice compounded of farce and fantasy without even one cornice of distinction. A great week for television. • VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
