Carol Reed had a great success with "through the eyes of a child" in The Fallen Idol. This is less regarded though it has charm, as well as a strong Diana Dors performance has a girl keen to marry her bodybuilding fiancee.
Dors worked best where she was the hot girl in a low rent environment. The bloke who plays her body builder isn't as good although at least the body building setting has novelty - as does the fact he goes into wrestling.
It is a novelty, too, to see such a strongly Jewish movie, filled with (it seems) a heavily Jewish cast, eg David Kossof, Sidney Tefler. Kossof's make up was distracting. The stuff with the goat at the end was moving - the central conceit is charming.
Celia Johnson's role is terrible - she hangs around moping about her husband off in South Africa making money. Give her something to do! Like an affair or a job or something.
Maybe more scenes needed to be from the POV of the kid.
I got into the stylised sets though it also meant at times I kept waiting for everyone to break out into song. Still, it's different.
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