Bank Holiday

Comedy-drama about an August bank holiday at the seaside. Though it lacks the guts and vitality of Millions Like Us and Holiday Camp as similarly populist epics, Reed's film, in its gentle mockery of the hopes and dreams of its 'ordinary' protagonists, is unique. Lockwood, not yet a wicked lady, needs an alibi of conscientious do-gooding to mask her desire, but at least it enables her to refuse to fulfil the fantasies of her office-boy fiancé. The film's real delights, though, come from the superb working-class character acting, particularly Kathleen Harrison, resplendent in beach pyjamas, defying her Cockney caricature of a husband by dancing with a college boy, and Wilfrid Lawson, lighting up the whole film with his suggestion of undreamed of worlds of eccentricity within a sleepy Sussex station sergeant.