The Uncle (1964 Desmond Davis & co-scr)

My childhood was slightly later then this, but everything seems horribly familiar - I could even smell what the sweet shop was like - both in the environment and the feelings evoked.

I don't know who Davis is, but his film deserves an honourable place with those other venerated films about the internal world of children - Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive, Dotora Kedzierzawka's Crows, Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups and Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Displaying signs of the French New Wave, this distinctly British film tells of a seven year old boy and episodes over a summer with his same-aged nephew, who is a pain in the ass, and other local kids. The story, by Margaret Abrams from her novel, screenplay written by her and the director, doesn't go where you frequently think it might.

Very well directed, the kids are great. Not heard of any of sterling cast and crew. Robert Duncan superb as the boy. With Brenda Bruce as the mother (one of Peeping Tom's victims), Rupert Davies the father, Ann Lynn the boy's sister and William Marlowe her husband, Maurice Denham the friendly shop-owner and Helen Fraser (Repulsion, Billy Liar) his daughter, Christopher Ariss the nephew and Barbara Leake the cleaning lady.

Beautifully shot by Manny Wynn (primarily a focus puller on films like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and A Taste of Honey, both for Walter Lassally) in black and white, and brilliantly edited by Brian Smedley-Aston, using tricks like comic book inserts, titles over action and displaced background sound (credited as an editor on Performance, no less). As for John Addison's music score fitting the action, I have only one word: perfect.

Among many beautiful shots I loved the boy being dropped off and the camera zooms back revealing him to be in the corner of a deserted road - a lovely way of showing not telling and a really good use of the over-used zoom.

Davis directed the 1964 Girl with Green Eyes with Rita Tushingham and Peter Finch, was a camera operator, and worked on the same two Lassally pictures referred to above, as well as Tom Jones, on which Wynn shot the second unit. Davis also made I Was Happy Here with Sarah Miles and Cyril Cusack in 1966, then directed much British TV, as well as the feature Clash of the Titans!

I'd never even heard of it. It was great.