A Kid for Two Farthings

Before he plunged headlong into 'international' film-making (never to be seen again), Carol Reed took this fanciful Wolf Mankowitz screenplay and tried to re-imagine Petticoat Lane in the poetic realist vein of Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert. A young boy (Ashmore) mistakes a one-horned goat for a miraculous unicorn, and eagerly anticipates good fortune for his friends about the neighbourhood. A whimsical film, it may have seemed horribly patronising in the '50s; but from today's perspective, an intriguing, even adventurous attempt to resurrect a national cinema that had clearly lost its legs.