User reviews

Not one of Arnold Bennett's best novels but one that deserved better treatment than it gets here. It would have been better made in the UK where the accents would have been better and the acting much improved. By the way the reviewer who thinks the "Five Towns" are in London should try studying a bit of geography. They are, as any fule kno, the towns in Staffordshire sometimes called Stoke-on-Trent.

I'm not familiar with the novel upon which this movie was based, so I can't say how loyal this movie was to it. But I suspect it was entirely too loyal and should have abandoned the original plot once Monty Woolley was cast in the role of a very shy man. The plot is a mess. Through the last half of the film Woolley alternates in his claim of who he is and the resulting complications make very little sense even within the internal logic of the plot. Something much more interesting could have been done, instead it has a pointless trial in which his claims of identity continue to alternate. The elements are all there, but they're all squandered and the result is a mess, which somehow was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Whatever appeal Gracie Fields had entirely escapes me.