A melancholy film, shot on location in seedy Notting Hill, then quite a dangerous place. Leslie Caron is a young and pregnant French girl who moves in to a boarding house with an interesting collection of tenants. They are failed writer Tom Bell, jazz saxophonist Brock Peters, somewhat savage landlady Avis Bunnage, failed actress Cicely Courtneidge, ageing prostitute Patricia Phoenix and younger, immigrant, one Verity Edmett.
Leslie tells interviewer Kate Hardie, in 1997, that Jack Clayton was going to direct it but withdrew for personal reasons. Producer James Woolf asked her who she would like to direct and she suggested Bryan (he had just made Whistle Down the Wind). Bryan was working with Dickie Attenborough, so he became the co-producer. She really wanted a go at a serious piece of acting, said that the only annoying thing Bryan did was to act out what he wanted from her, which she did not appreciate. And that the most intense scenes, like the confrontation with Bell on the stairs, she only wanted to do once (otherwise it becomes 'acting').
She also pointed out how progressive the film was in its dealing with issues like abortion and homosexuality. Such were race relations like then - well in the US - that Brock took care not even to touch Leslie in breaks between filming.
It's another fabulous teaming of the smoothest camera operator Chic Waterson and his amazing DP Dougie Slocombe a year ahead of The Servant.
The use of the Brahms Piano Concerto gives the film a wonderful resonance. John Barry composed the jazz numbers. Great sound as well
It's very well acted, and put together incisively by Anthony Harvey. Must mention sleazy abortionist doctor Emlyn Williams and lovely hospital doctor Gerald Sim, also Seance on a Wet Afternoon and King Rat, Our Mother's House, Oh What a Lovely War, Ryan's Daughter, much on TV. And the new girl at the end is Nanette Newman.
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