User reviews

The stunning Eastmancolor photography of Ernest Steward, Acker Bilk's swanky Jackie Gleason like score, (particularly the lush main theme) and location shooting in London, do much to distinguish this cautionary tale of a young woman treading down the well worn primrose path.

Janet Munro convinces as a the naive Welsh rustic, ("Jennie Jones") after La Dolce Vita, to which end she tosses decency aside, and heads to the big city, in her pursuit of a theatrical career. That her career is only to be that of "kept woman" is the discovery leading to the titular harvest.

Performances are all very apt, (particulary Francis Matthews, who nails the characterization of a louche libertine)and Director Peter Graham Scott certainly keeps our interest.

But just when one is most absorbed, most ready to watch Jennie's world unravel, the film ends, and one comes away feeling slightly cheated, with the sense that this MIGHT have been a great film, with a running time of 30 more minutes.

Still, it invites and deserves consideration alongside "Darling," and "Taste of Honey," as films that were also exploring unsavoury misfits in swinging 60's Great Britain.

I don't know how I've missed this little gem. The terrific lost talent of Janet Munro and a whole host of top notch actors of the time like the acerbic Thora Hird and the tender John Stride give great performances here. The story is a natural successor to the gritty black and white Bryanston kitchen sink dramas of the late 50s early 60s. It sits well too with pre swinging 60s films like Alfie. A perfect snapshot of the social and sexual mores of the time. A special mention too for the beautiful colour cinematography and the evocative London locations. I don't think you'll be disappointed

This movie turned up on a local television station in the midnight to dawn slot and I watched it purely by chance. I had never heard of this British movie nor were any of the actors/actresses familiar to me. Despite this the opening scene, musical theme and the scene after it made me want to stick around until the end and learn the full story.

The movie is about Jenny, who predictably is poor and leads a dull ordinary life. Influenced by the models she sees in television and magazine ads, she dreams of a life full of glamour, excitement, beautiful clothes etc. A naive Jenny, in an unexpected and unplanned manner finds herself in London. She has no money and no clothes except for the clothes she's wearing. Her dream does eventually become a reality, but she becomes a victim. Was it all worth it?

The movie begins in the present, flashes back to the not so distant past and back to the present for the final scenes. Jenny's life is shown up to a certain point. After that you are left to fill in the gaps of what might have happened to her, but the clues make it obvious.

Parts of the story were predictable and you could see the story unfold from a mile away. This however did not ruin my enjoyment of the film. Part of the enjoyment was the ending. I expected a more predictable ending, but instead I was surprised and a little stunned.

The theme of the movie seems to be poor, happy and in love versus rich and miserable. The final scene to me suggests that Jenny would have been better off if she had stayed with the man who loved her even though they were living in poverty.

An entertaining dramatic film with a good but depressing storyline. It was worth staying up for.

Of course this film is dated. Why else watch it? The story is too ugly today. This is glossy and the characters and clothes lovely.

This film has a long beginning, no middle and a short ending. It is still well worth watching.

Jennie is a young pretty girl from a working class family. She lives in Wales which is made to look like the dreariest place on earth. She is dying to get to London. Eventually she does but it is not under the best circumstances.

Jennie lucks out. She meets caring and decent Bob, who goes to protect her. She lies and claims to be pregnant to garner more sympathy.

Janet Munroe was quite lovely and a very good actress. John Stride does a good job as the kind and patient man who falls in love with her,

How does it turn out? Does Jennie build a life with this devoted young man or does she risk it all for a chance at the limelight?

A morality tale for the early sixties by the ever-enterprising Allied Filmmakers anticipating the journey taken by that year's headliner Christine Keeler.

This glossy Eastmancolor adaptation of the book by Patrick Hamilton is usually overlooked, but it provides a chance to savour the youthful beauty of the late lamented Janet Munro, who sadly like the heroine of this fable never lived to experience the fate she so feared of losing her youthful lustre as Miss Keeler certainly did.

Miss Munro might have found have found lasting happiness had she not unwisely favoured louche bounder Alan Badel over nice young John Stride, last seen courting good girl Anne Cunningham.

Saw this at the Dominion, Twickenham, Middlesex, in November 1963 - it was the B-movie to a film I've forgotten - I happened to see Bitter Harvest second in the programme. I enjoyed the London setting of the film - Jenny has a room overlooking the railway tracks at Paddington but the film had an overall feeling of terrible sadness and waste - I went and looked at the dark river Thames flowing under the footbridge to Eel Pie island - then I went home and heard that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. So that's what I was doing when...

this film brings back memories because the first part of the film was made in the village i lived in, and my friend and i was extras on the bus taking the main character out of the valley. I got the princely sum of one pound. The bus belonged to my friends uncle and we had to do the scene about twenty times to get it right we also had a fire engine spraying water for it to look like rain. Iwould love to see this film but don't know where to purchase it from. Is the one Patsey Kensitt making the same film i seem to have seen a film with the same title with her starring in it, I was surprised to see that Terence Alexander was not the main star as i only remembered him and Janet Munro at the time.

B movie or A movie, it's not a grandiose masterpiece but it's still good and watchable. The actors are all good, the story is not quite great, it has some gaps but, we are all super intelligent viewers, aren't we, and we can imagine what is missing. The first 5 minutes are very powerful, when Jenny destroys the pillow with scissors, pours the drink on the photo to Karl (Alan Badel) and throws her dresses out the window. The final scene in which Bob (John Stride) crosses the street with Ella (Anne Cunningham) and they are almost hit by the ambulance containing Jenny's lifeless body is impressive and strong. Janet Munro did a great role.

The film starts bad and ends even worse. You have hopes for Janet Munro in the beginning, and you do hope she will make it and come out all right, especially when the sympathetic John Stride takes care of her and even is willing to marry her although she expects a child with another, his patience and tolerance is magnificent, but she always wants something else, and that's what brought her down the wrong lane from the beginning. Her acting is superb, and so is everyone else's, while Alan Badel puts the final stamp of doom on her fate by his mere mesmerising presence. The story is bleak, like a naturalistic documentary from the minds of Zola or Flaubert, her character is very much like Madame Bovary's, and it is not a cheerful saga and too common to become a real tragedy - curiously enough, from the beginning she detests everything common, but that's actually where she ends up.

"Jennie" (Janet Munro) is fed up struggling through her mundane life in Wales, and so heads to the bright lights of London where she encounters the decent and loving "Bob" (John Stride). All goes well for them for a while, they are very much in love - but she has a bit of a restless spirit and when the manipulative "Karl" (Alan Badel) comes onto the scene it looks like it might be curtains for their idyllic relationship. The rest of this rather procedural drama is interspersed with some flashbacks that illustrate that the past life of "Jennie" is not without it's demons and slowly we begin to reconcile those with her aspirations for a better life. It's a rather disappointing melodrama this, with a cast that don't really gel very well and although Munro is enthusiastic enough on screen, the whole story has a rather predictable nature to it ending with a certain inevitability that I found rather obvious. Badel was always good as the rather sleazy character, and here he does steal what scenes he is in. Otherwise, though, this is an unremarkable drama that might have been provocative in 1963, but is not remotely now.

This road-to-ruin melodrama is surprisingly watchable if you don't expect too much. The storyline is totally predictable, the characters little more than cliches, the colour lurid and I thought I detected some heavy-handed editing as 3rd-billed Alan Badell has only a few lines in a couple of scenes while uncredited Thora Hird (fresh from her triumph in "A Kind of Loving") has much more screentime as a grasping landlady.

Jennie (Janet Munroe) is a bored young lady who lives in Wales. Her life is pretty dull and it's not surprising that she longs for more out of life. However, HOW she ends up in London and living the wild life is the subject of this silly film that, inexplicably, was shot in color--something unusual for a rather cheap British film of this period. During the course of this mildly interesting but somewhat trashy film, you see Jennie going from a sweet thing to an increasingly selfish user. And, since it's a heavy-handed morality tale, it's obvious how all this is going to end.

This is not a terrible movie but it's also not a movie with much of anything to recommend it either. I do think it's funny how the film is supposed to be a warning against bad behavior--yet they also throw in a bit of nudity and sex. Not bad but you could certainly do better.

Perhaps somewhat dated by today's standards, but, nevertheless, an interesting tale about a girl from Wales who ends up in London and then begins what she perceives to be her climb up the ladder of success. Each time she meets a new person, the viewer learns a little bit more about her personality. Where will it all end?