Simply Perfect

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

'The Card' was just what war-worn Britain needed in the early fifties. This innocent, cheeky and humorous talkie would have had the cheap seats in fits!Alec Guinness plays Edward Henry 'Denry' Machin, a young ambitious chancer who is just about likable enough to get away with the stunts he pulls on his way up the ladder of social and business success. He pounces on each and every opportunity and risks everything he has... and each venture seems to work out very well. Edward is a very 'English' working class hero and is the sum of many parts. There's some Charlie Chaplin, some Arthur Askey and even some George Cole in the mix. At first, he seems to be rather effete and almost effeminate... he's definitely a mother's boy, though his stubborn mother wouldn't know it!The story is buoyed by a mass of top class British talent. Already famous Petula Clark plays Nellie but she's always in the shadow of the magnificent Glynis Johns. Her blistering on screen feline sexuality is just pure magic.Edward Chapman plays a jealous adversary. Chapman was an extraordinarily busy actor throughout his long career but is probably best remembered for playing opposite Norman Wisdom as Mr Grimsdale.Joan Hickson shows up as a dissatisfied and grouchy property owner. She went on to find her greatest professional success towards the end of her life playing Miss Marple in the best of any Agatha Christie series ever made... in my humble opinion!Towards the end, there's even a beautiful cameo by Wilfrid Hyde-White. And there are a lot more names for 'spotters' to enjoy, too.The story is mostly good-natured silliness with no real plot to think about and there are some great outdoor shots of post-war England for good measure.At this time of writing (2017), there's a good copy of this available to watch on YouTube... so do yourself a favour... unwrap that choc-ice and get over there!

Producer: John Bryan. A Ronald Neame Production. Presented by the J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Copyright 16 April 1952 by British Film Makers, Ltd. U.S. release through Universal: 28 October 1952. New York opening at the Fine Arts: 28 October 1952. U.K. release through General Film Distributors: 24 March 1952. Australian release through British Empire Films: 4 June 1953. Sydney opening at the Lyceum. 88 minutes.U.S. release title: The PROMOTER.COMMENT: This wonderfully picaresque tale of an eager but very likable young man who gets ahead mostly by his sheer wits (though with a little help from Dame Fortune here and there), and mostly at the expense of a short-sighted local bureaucracy (so masterfully portrayed here by Edward Chapman) has an eternal application that makes it just as enjoyably relevant today as when Arnold Bennett first mapped its course. When that go-ahead entrepreneur is enacted by such a roguishly sympathetic Alec Guinness and he is so happily supported by such a winning gallery of femmes fatales (led by the entrancing Glynis Johns), eccentrics (Gibb McLaughlin's surprisingly levitous lawyer's clerk is our favorite here) and stuffed shirts (you can't beat Edward Chapman for pompously outraged indignation); and when the contrivances of the plot are so richly amusing yet so credibly ingenious; and when the direction is so deft that every touch, every angle, every composition is so attractive yet so exactly right; and when production values are so inconspicuously extravagant that you feel no longer a spectator but a participant in stirring if parochial times; — then my friends you have a movie that achieves real greatness.

Alec Guinness' reputation as a serious actor tends to overshadow the subtle but deftly comic early work he was involved in, even when the films themselves (especially his handful of Ealing classics) are highly-regarded. This was another fine (and reasonably popular) vehicle for him in which he plays a go-getter(!) who uses his wits – and the helping hand lent him by Fate – to rise the ranks in British society from a washer-woman's son to, ultimately, Mayor of his town. In this respect, the film reminded me of two similar efforts i.e. NOTHING BUT THE BEST (1964) and THE RISE AND RISE OF MICHAEL RIMMER (1970) – which I owned but had not yet checked out (and which I then promptly opted to include in my ongoing Christmas schedule); of course, thematically, it is not unlike Ealing's own KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949; in which Guinness had memorably played eight murder victims)...but the approach here is altogether more genteel and nostalgic (even if there are a few undeniable belly-laughs along the way), thus lacking the pointed satirical barbs which distinguished the earlier (and later) films. Anyway, the star delivers an entirely disarming performance and the film – augmented by its charming period setting – proves a most delightful concoction. He is abetted besides by three splendid leading ladies in Glynis Johns (surprisingly playing haughty), Valerie Hobson (obviously aristocratic, her feathers apparently not even unruffled by a pratfall!) and Petula Clark (not yet the chart-topping singer and, tackling the role of a commoner, is naturally Guinness' eventual choice of partner). Foremost among the supporting cast, then, is Edward Chapman – later a stooge in many a Norman Wisdom comedy – as Guinness' disgruntled former employer, but several other familiar faces crop up throughout (Peter Copley, Michael Hordern, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Frank Pettingell, etc). For the record, this was the first of four appearances by the star in films directed by Neame (apart from two the latter had produced for David Lean); of these, the only one I have yet to watch is another comedy, THE HORSE'S MOUTH (1958), which I might as well get to now rather than later...

This is a wonderful film. That's it. There is nothing else to be said. Really. It's gentle, charming, witty and just about perfect in every way. (Ok, if you are a hard-core slasher / zombie movie fan you aren't going to like it - but anyone into grown up movies will be charmed.)The script is light and flawless, there isn't a wasted shot, and Guinness is superb. After a few minutes I had forgotten it was Alec Guinness on the screen and was hooked. I especially loved the way Guinness couldn't dance at his first lesson - a wonderful piece of physical acting - and I was genuinely squirming with apprehension as the gauche young solicitor's clerk marched through the ballroom to ask the Countess of Chell for a dance.A beautiful gem of a film.