A French Mistress

One of the great disappointments in post-war British film history is the decline of the Boulting Brothers. It's a mystery how film-makers capable of turning out thrillers as accomplished as Brighton Rock and Seven Days to Noon spent the latter half of their career churning out flaccid satirical comedies. This effort, set in an English public school, is typical late Boulting nonsense, a prurient yarn about how excited teachers and students alike become when a glamorous new female teacher arrives on their doorstep. There's a certain pleasure in seeing warhorses like Justice and Parker try to out-ham one another, but no hiding the feebleness of the material (from a play by Robert Munro) or the Boultings' approach to it.