Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Most of us feel dissatisfied with the time in which they are living (I was five in the year 1964, to which I have long felt a powerful desire to return when I have the time, and will this time be paying more attention); and the feeling that the past is still out there somewhere going about its business continues to resonate through such disparate works of fiction as 'Wild Strawberries' and 'Goodnight Sweetheart'.Through the medium of that authentic miracle of time travel, YouTube, having just watched the 1951 Technicolor version with Tyrone Power of John L. Balderston's West End hit of 1926 I was immediately able to summon up like magic the earlier version adapted by Balderston himself with the star of the Broadway production of 1929, Leslie Howard; which for many years was once a lost film. (As a visitor from the future, I was intrigued to discover that Howard's fiancée Kate Pettigrew was played by the British stage actress Valerie Taylor - also from the original Broadway cast - who I know as a middle-aged woman from 'Went the Day Well' in 1942.) The romance between Peter Standish and Helen Pettigrew engages the interest far more in this version, which has that pre-Code deftness of touch (Heather Angel as Helen also wears a chic thirties suit with a fur collar easily as eye-catching as her 18th Century creations).With the benefit of hindsight, it's sobering to be aware that Howard, Power and Christopher Reeve (star of 'Somewhere in Time') were all taken before their time; something only a visitor from the future - or a film viewer - could know.

Leslie Howard proves once again that he was the matinée idol women adored long before he was unwillingly cast as Ashley Wilkes in "Gone with the Wind," a role he hated to play.He gives a very forceful performance here as a young man who is fascinated by his ancestry and somehow transports himself to an earlier era, with unhappy consequences he couldn't have expected when events turn against him.Heather Angel makes a good impression (she and Howard both starred in the Broadway stage version), but the tale itself is much too talky for the screen and would have benefited from a wider use of outdoor scenes to take away some of the stage-bound feeling. An unusual feature is the almost constant flow of background music in an era when most soundtracks were only punctuated by dialog without musical effects. This affects the quality of the spoken words, of which there are far too many for my taste and, in this case, because it's based on a stage play taken from an unfinished Henry James novel called "A Sense of Time." It takes a willingness to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the fantasy aspects of the story, but it's done in an interesting way and directed in stylish fashion by Frank Lloyd.Summing up: One of Howard's better film performances, he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. Remade by Fox in 1951 as a film for Tyrone Power and Ann Blyth called "I'll Never Forget You."

Although this version of Berkeley Square was little more than a photographed stage play it does have Leslie Howard portraying Peter Standish as he did on Broadway for 229 performances during the 1929-1930 season. No other member of the cast repeated their roles. I have to say that the Tyrone Power version from 1951 was and is more cinematically viable.That being said Leslie Howard was doing a part that was tailor made for him. He's a jaded American scientist who is firmly convinced that he is at some point in time destined to change places with an ancestor also named Peter Standish from the 18th century post American Revolution Great Britain.When he gets there he mixes and mingles with high and mighty of the day like the Prince Of Wales, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. And he knows things that others don't and uses all kinds of modern in this case 1928 idioms that first amuse then frighten.He's in fact pledged to one woman, but falls in love with her sister played by Heather Angel, something he did not count on. It's almost like a trip to Fantasy Island where Mr. Rourke has arranged a trip to the Age of Reason. Usually those trips to some idealized place in history involved a cruel dose of reality as well and in Berkeley Square Leslie Howard gets just such a dose.Howard and Angel are a wonderfully matched pair of lovers who will meet some day in time and space and know it. Howard earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor, the second coming with Pygmalion. Had Berkeley Square been better cinematically it probably would be more revived. As it is it's a great performance by Leslie Howard, one his legion of fans should treasure.

This is a very amusing love story with a good dash of humor. Much of the humor centers around the culture clash between Standish and the 18th century family. Standish uses modern terms and slips when he reveals things that happen in the future. The culture clash is a cautionary tale for would be travelers. This film appealed to many women because Leslie Howard was a heart throb for many of them. My mother loved this film and could watch it over and over. She was so disappointed when late in her life it disappeared from the old movies shown on TV.It is currently not commercially available, but a number of vendors have poor quality CDs or tapes for sale. All of these were probably made from a VHS tape from a TV showing. The tape was deteriorated and possibly copied several times so there is a lot of instability and wiggling of the image. The original broadcast used extreme compression of the video and sound. As a result the noise level rises to become very loud until dialog causes the gain to be cut. As a result the dialog is sometimes very indistinct. The music which was originally soft also rises to match the level of the dialog. Once this is restored by hand, the film is fairly listenable. The complaint of another reviewer about the music being too loud may stem from watching a copy with similarly compressed sound. In addition the broadcast severely cropped the film and did not stabilize the jitter.This is a film that deserves restoration from the existing prints, but when and if this happens is unknown. Until then buying one of the existing CDs may be the only way to view this fine film.