Jonnys neue Heimat

Denis Gifford probably didn't have this early Children's Film Foundation presentation in mind when he wrote that Lewis Gilbert made "some of the best films about World War Two", but it compares well with 'The Search' and 'The Boy with Green Hair' in it's depiction of the plight of a displaced East European war orphan (the 'Johnny' of the title actually being named Jacek) alone in the world.

Made long ago when £17 was a life-changing sum of money, the excellent location photography of Edinburgh and Dumfrees is by Gerald Gibbs not long after he went north of the border to shoot 'Whiskey Galore!' It's rather sombre for a CFF production until the entrance of (SPOILERS COMING:) 'Flash Harry Fisher' and 'Fingers Brown', the usual pair of gallumphing crooks in loud suits played of course by Sydney Tafler and Michael Balfour; Tafler for a while becoming Fagan to Janek's Oliver Twist. (When they appear Antony Hopkins' otherwise wistful woodwind score turns comic to remind us how funny they are.)

The former actually says "It's a fair cop" when eventually foiled; and with all those lochs available they missed a trick not dunking them in one of them.