Bond Street

I finally caught up with this film again on the recent, excellent DVD from Network, not having seen it since the late 1960s when it was shown on ITV.

It is not a great film by any means. The main reason for watching it today is the glimpse of fashionable Bond Street just after the war when it was still its Victorian self (today it's almost unrecognisable) and for the stream of famous British character actors, some credited but many not.

Roland Young came back from Hollywood for this and is as dapper and amusing as ever. He died 5 years later, much too soon, aged just 65.

Portmanteau films were (as others point out on this board) very popular in the 1940s. I believe the first one, TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942) which spawned the cycle, may have given Anatole DE Grunwald the idea for BOND ST. In the earlier TALES, the stories are all strung together by the fate of a formal evening suit and the people that own it. Its all-star cast included Edward G Robinson in one of his most subtle performances.

BOND STREET uses a wedding trousseau in much the same manner, but it cannot compete with a starry cast.

Yet it's still very entertaining and the location shots as I say, are quite wonderful.

The scene in the posh restaurant where, thanks to wartime rationing still being in force, only fish cakes are on the menu, is priceless.

A wallow in nostalgia that is well worth a look!