French Without Tears

In an idyllic little French language school, trainee diplomats and a sex-starved naval commander lose their hearts and minds to a winsome, gooey adventuress. Terence Rattigan's 'well made play' - a mixture of sophisticated badinage and schoolboy misogyny - now looks utterly inconsequential, redolent only of the anaemic '30s complacency which led to Munich. PM's son 'Puffin' Asquith struggles valiantly but in vain to turn it into something cinematic, and even Culver's nicely judged performance as the stoically lovesick sailor fails to life the film beyond being simply a historical curiosity. Needless to say the critics at the time thought it was wonderful.