Hell, Heaven or Hoboken

It's hard not to imagine that Bryan Forbes who wrote the script for this 1958 film was not influenced by the James Bond character who first appeared in the Ian Fleming book "Casino Royale" published in England in 1953. As the first Bond film was not released until 1962, the character John Mills plays --cheeky, disrespectful of authority, as adept with women as he is in intelligence work-- is either a predecessor to 007 or an affectionate borrowing from Fleming's novel. Up until then, British men were usually depicted on screen as stiff-upper lip, decent chaps who did their jobs without complaining; surely never distracted from defending the Empire by a pretty face. Mills, with his enormous charm and good looks, introduced a new type of Brit to cinema audiences --sexy, funny and sometimes outrageous-- a character which Sean Connery was to play to perfection many years later.