This doesn't quite work on any level with an eclectic cast shoehorned together and giving the impression that all they want to do is get it over with, pick up their wedge and go home. The only thing that could induce me to sit through a schmaltz fest like this was Celia Johnson in the lead role. Clearly Reed had seen her as Ethel Gibbon in Coward's superb This Happy Breed and noted how well she was able to bring off a cockney despite being one of nature's aristocrats. What Reed overlooked, of course, was that he is no David Lean and Mankowitz is no Coward so that poor Miss Johnson is left floundering. What Diana Dors is doing in the same film as Celia Johnson we'll never know. Even badly miscast Celia Johnson is value for money but that's the only thing this has going for it.
Review of A Kid for Two Farthings
