The Virgin and the Gypsy

For a film that is simplicity itself in its essence, Miles’ great work has been slightingly treated, and there is a very simple reason, his editing is too fast for what are called reviewers.

Half the film is pictures, and they are sometimes very rapid, to such an extent that many a critic didn’t know what hit him, one may boldly say.

The stultified house, careless youth, and English countryside combine to provide an exclusion and a divorce and a flood and rencounter that all in all make the drama and its resolution.

Miles’ editing is a mercy, it gives an excuse. Nevertheless, Canby gave the film a sympathetic review in the New York Times.

The Maids

A cruel mistress at the Place Vendôme, and consequences.

The technique is to adapt the stage production directly but give Madame her prerogatives (cp. Ford & LeRoy’s Mister Roberts). Thus the final transformation from one style to the other.

Madness, death and destruction are in the honey of Madame’s tongue, the maids act out the ritual of abasement and revenge, it’s they who pay. This note is for the benefit of the British writer on the film who thought it had failed to convey a dramatic essay by Genet on “la vice anglaise”.

That Lucky Touch

The Brussels lockout, the NATO divide, consumer sales to Arabia, it went for nothing with the critics.

“Contemporary light comedy of love-against-the-odds,” Variety summed up.

“Dim romantic farce,” said Halliwell’s Film Guide, likewise missing the point.

Time Out Film Guide followed suit.

William Friedkin’s great variant is Deal of the Century.

Alternative 3

The British brain drain, indeed that of the entire world, is a Soviet-American response to greenhouse gases, they’re all on Mars, those boffins and artists and people of every stripe, so says this April Fool’s edition of Science Report (Anglia Television), canceled.