1938-01-27
N/A
86 min
A 1930s British summer Bank Holiday starts at midday on Saturday with a rush for the trains to the seaside. Doreen and Milly are off to a beauty contest, Geoffrey and Catherine are having an illicit weekend in the Grand Hotel and May and the kids are set for a more straightforward holiday of sea, sand, and pub. Meanwhile, the manager and performers on the pier are praying for rain.
I wasn't around in 1938 (neither were my folks), but I can still recognise much of the sentiment of this film as the British obsession with the seaside is demonstrated, warts and all, in this lightly comedic assessment of our buckets and spade escapades at the weekend (sun shining or not!). Carol Reed has a couple of different familial examples for us to follow, the principals being the gorgeous Margaret Lockwood ("Catherine") and her beau "Geoffrey" (Hugh Williams), but we also have a young girl traveling to be in a beauty contest, and a family with three kids and a dad who just wants to find the peace and quiet of the "Queen's Head" pub. The Lockwood/Wiliams storyline is the more interesting - she, a nurse, had left her work the previous day having had to deal with the tragic death of the wife of "Stephen" (John Lodge), whom she had been caring for. Despite the best efforts of her fiancée and of the distractions of them trying to find an hotel, she cannot focus on her holiday. Has she changed allegiances? The other themes interweave nicely, if insubstantially, and there is loads of charming period photography of a holiday culture that has long since departed... It's not anyone's finest work. It does lack focus, the dialogue is a bit strained at times, the plot a bit stereotyped and cluttered - but I still rather enjoyed it.
