Love's a Luxury

Theatrical producer Hugh Wakefield and his star Derek Bond motor up to a country house Wakefield has rented for a month. Wakefield meant to take wife Helen Shingler, but when actress Zena Marshall was spotted leaving their flat, she decided Wakefield was carrying on an affair. Wakefield hopes to mend matters with his wife and for a quiet month. But then there wouldn't be any comedy, and Bond wouldn't have to spend half the movie dressed like Charley's Aunt.

It's based on a London show by Edward Hole and Guy Paxton, and it shows. Director Francis Searle has opened it from a one-set farce for only five of its 85 minutes, and even those scenes could have been covered in the main set, or simply referenced in dialogue. I was not terribly impressed. It's filled with smart women and foolish men, with Bill Shine playing a Richard Haydn sort of character in a scout uniform who wanders in asking for an egg and winds up annoying everyone, including me. Wakefield speaks his lines as if he was in the stage production and has toned it down only minimally. As a result of the rather standard post-war British farce syndrome, there's only one amusing scene, in which Wakefield and Bond convince Shine there are spies about. It wasn't enough to make this more than watchable.