Heart of a Child

Clive Donner's success at directing a cast of children in 'The Secret Place' sparked false hopes he might be another Philip Leacock, quickly disabused by this talky adaptation of Phyllis Bottome's 1942 novel about a cute blond kid's love for a big lugubrious St. Bernard. Described by Andrew Sarris as "a gifted artist with an eye for contemporaneous detail", the 1918 backdrop possibly inhibited him, and he didn't attempt another period subject (although all his 'swinging sixties' films now look like period pieces) until the disastrous 'Alfred the Great' ten years later.

The location work actually shot in the Austrian Tyrol makes it resemble a 'heimatfilm' of the fifties, only in drab black & white rather than the gleaming colour typical of the Austrian model of the time. And Donald Pleasance (for once sporting a respectable head of hair) isn't really intimidating enough as the "cruel, mean, pig" of a father.