THE WAYWARD BUS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 24

THE WAYWARD BUS

(20th Century-Fox) Y Cert. WHEN he looks hopefully each week for flowers among the corn, the film reviewer should never despise the more modest things he comes across-the undistinguished but competent, entertaining movies that all register Fair on Barometer. This week there are three of them. Of these The Wayward Bus seems to offer most: not only a story but a group of quite interesting characters. I haven’t read the John Steinbeck novel from which Victor Vicas made this film, but sex and/or love seems to be the theme. A young bus driver (Rick Jason), whose relations with his wife are tense, interesting but unsatisfying, tells her when he goes off with an odd bus-load of people that he’s not coming back. Diverted by storms, the bus makes heavy going of its 50-mile journey. Its passengers include a neurotic young woman (Dolores Michaels) who seems likely to seduce the driver if she gets the chance, her inadequate parents, a showgirl (Jayne Mansfield) who wants to forget her past, a travelling salesman (Dan Dailey), a couple of likeable teenagers and one or two others. The buswhich you could regard as a symbol of something or other if you wanted to be’ solemn-acts as a sort of incubator of the feelings, and this and that seems bound to happen and does, while back at the shabby snack-bar which she runs with her husband Miss Collins hits the

bottle hard. As the Y certificate should make clear, it’s not really as shocking as it sounds, and with someone as engaging as Dan Dailey around it is even at times quite amusing. Playing and direction are always adequate-I was especially interested to see Miss Collins deglamourised-and the setting, often photographed in a fairly low key, is worth looking at. You might find it all rather contrived, but I thought its greatest flaw its ending, with everyone suddenly -just a bit too older and wiser to be credible.