Friday, March 27, 2015

Movie review - "Upstairs and Downstairs" (1959) **

Cheerful, bright, dim comedy which is one of the least well known of the Ralph Thomas-Betty Box output. Michael Craig and Anne Heywood are a young married couple; Heywood's father James Robertson Justice is Craig's boss and he suggests they get hired help so they can entertain. This leads to a series of not particularly funny episodes involving their attempt to find domestic help.

There's Claudia Cardinale in an early role as an Italian who parties with sailors, an old couple who are dodgy, a bossy old lady. Then in the last half Mylene Demongeot arrives as a hot girl and causes temperatures to rise. She romances Daniel Massey (in an American accent) but gets a crush on Craig.

A little more story would have helped - or laughs. And a little less upper middle class smugness. But it is cheery and amiable and it shot in glossy colour photography. Demongeot is very pretty and I enjoyed seeing Cardinale. There's also comic support from people like Sid James and Joan Sims.

What can you say about a movie like this really? It feel as though it belongs more to the 1930s (though there is a semi racy scene where Heywood flashes her bare back in bed with Craig.) Everyone looks good, it's dim, it mocks foreigners, etc etc.

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