One of my all time favorites.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Jon Whiteley had a great potential to became a star but sadly stop your brief career,remembering he in Moonfleet so amazing acting,this turn plays a young boy who has to follow your bitter father in sunny small city in Spain,meeting a young gardener quickly became friends,which hassled a jealous father,this touching drama suggest a proper question...why the British people are so cold instead Latin people,is it implied so hard in this story...in fact both different ethnicities are the main factor for such culture shock increasingly for a unsolved father...the amazing landscape and amazing spots at Catalonia deserves receive some credit to the picture.Resume: First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

Heartrending story of a friendship between two very honest people, a simple Spanish gardener and the young son (about 10) of the hopeless bureaucrat he is working for, who doesn't understand his own son's own good and keeps on blundering through the whole film, until it is too late to make amends, succeeding only in ruining his own life and almost his son's. But they made a great drama out of this seemingly idyllic trifle from the paradise of Costa Brava in Spain, and the acting is wonderful - all are perfect. Michael Hordern makes a very difficult part as the father, you hate his stupidity with all your heart and must understand and share the boy's very reasonable feelings in the end, Dirk Bogarde plays by understatements as usual and makes his part the more efficient for that, while the real character is Cyril Cussack as the servant in the kitchen - the man releasing the shocks.I have never seen a film made on a novel by A.J.Cronin that failed, I have said this before, they seem all to approach the level of masterpieces just by their psychology, and this is certainly no exception. The very efficient music and the wonderful colouring add to a real treat worth wasting an evening on. Almost a tenner, at least 9,5.

I don't want to sound mean or be too harsh on this minor film.However, a plainly irritating, "delicate" (as his father calls him) curly blonde schoolboy and a charisma-free Dirk Bogarde, who could have at least sprung up some light accent don't make for great entertainment these days.Michael Horden, however, is perfect as the work-is-all diplomat, who's so far removed from real life by his over protection for his son, that the story becomes about him and of a spent dinosaur of imperialist bigot-ism. Every other review chants on about homophobic this and that, but, any child, boy or girl who is cocooned by an oft absent but overbearing single parent is going to find company, solace and friendship in any stranger who spends any time at all within their sight or grasp. Thus, it's perfectly natural for that child to explore beyond the strict boundaries set out - it's natural exploration. Any adult who sees a change for the better in that child is most likely to quietly encourage it.Jose (Bogarde) is just an everyday Joe and as the Spanish Gardener in question, sees the increasing injustices to the boy and then, to himself. Quietly reliable, he is the opposite to the boy's father and so they click. Interfering house staff, fed up with both master and child do them no favours. The film then proceeds in a routine manner of misunderstanding, injustice and then, not wanting to spoil the ending...The Technicolour is pallid, you don't see much of Spain and so the overall effect is a bit of a non-event but there is a story there and quite a good one at that.

A beautifully filmed (in VistaVision and Technicolor) and very interesting character study. A sort of Eternal Triangle story where the three main characters are male. Adapted from A. J. Cronin's controversial 1950 novel of the same name, the plot concerns a middle aged diplomat at the British Consul in Madrid, Harrington Brande (Michael Hordern), who is posted to a sleepy coastal town on the Spanish Costa Brava. His wife has left him and all he has is his eleven years old son, Nicholas (played by eleven years old Jon Whiteley), on whom he dotes and of whom he is so possessive that he will not allow him to go to school or to make any friends at all, even of boys his own age. Brande wants his son all to himself. His excuse for this is that Nicholas is "delicate", having suffered a serious childhood illness and must be "protected." When Brande hires Jose (Dirk Bogarde) as a gardener for the villa, Jose and the lonely Nicholas become firm friends from their first meeting, much to the consternation of the insanely jealous Brande, who goes to much trouble to destroy the friendship between his son and the gardener.At the time, Jon Whiteley's parents were concerned about the implied sexual relationship between Jose and Nicholas in Cronin's novel and were assured by the director, Philip Leacock and the producer and screenwriter, John Bryan, that "the darker side of Cronin's novel would be omitted and the film designed for family consumption." One scene from Chapter 15 of the novel that was cut entirely from the film was where, at Brande's insistence, his friend Professor Halevy (the character changed to Doctor Harvey for the film and played by Geoffrey Keen) has a "man to man" talk with Nicholas as the boy lays on his bed in his semi-darkened bedroom and talks to Nicholas about the boy's sexual feelings and tries to get him to admit to having a sexual relationship with Jose…especially when he and Jose went fishing together in the isolated countryside…something which, much to the consternation of Halevy, who is convinced that there is something of a sexual nature going on between them, Nicholas will not admit to. Even though all this was left out of the film, the film still comes across as ambiguous and the viewer is left to put their own interpretation on the relationships between Jose and Nicholas and between Nicholas and his very possessive father.Overall, the performances are uniformly fine, only in one instance coming across as contrived…the scene where Nicholas runs into Jose's arms and sobs. Good as he was within his range, Jon Whiteley just couldn't handle this scene and comes across as the worst sounding and most unconvincing sobber in film history. Whether or not he could have handled the scene of the "man to man" talk about his character's sexual feelings and his feelings for Jose if it had been left in the film is a debatable point. Certainly, he had the right director in Philip Leacock to help him through such a scene, as it was Leacock who, three years earlier, had directed him in "The Kidnappers", for which Jon had won an Academy Award.