Berkeley Square

This is a very amusing love story with a good dash of humor. Much of the humor centers around the culture clash between Standish and the 18th century family. Standish uses modern terms and slips when he reveals things that happen in the future. The culture clash is a cautionary tale for would be travelers. This film appealed to many women because Leslie Howard was a heart throb for many of them. My mother loved this film and could watch it over and over. She was so disappointed when late in her life it disappeared from the old movies shown on TV.

It is currently not commercially available, but a number of vendors have poor quality CDs or tapes for sale. All of these were probably made from a VHS tape from a TV showing. The tape was deteriorated and possibly copied several times so there is a lot of instability and wiggling of the image. The original broadcast used extreme compression of the video and sound. As a result the noise level rises to become very loud until dialog causes the gain to be cut. As a result the dialog is sometimes very indistinct. The music which was originally soft also rises to match the level of the dialog. Once this is restored by hand, the film is fairly listenable. The complaint of another reviewer about the music being too loud may stem from watching a copy with similarly compressed sound. In addition the broadcast severely cropped the film and did not stabilize the jitter.

This is a film that deserves restoration from the existing prints, but when and if this happens is unknown. Until then buying one of the existing CDs may be the only way to view this fine film.