BAROMETER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1054, 6 November 1959, Page 20

BAROMETER

FINE: "Nowhere to Go." FAIR: "Bachelor of Hearts.’ FAIR: "Ask Any Girl.’’

BACHELOR OF HEARTS

(Rank) G Cert. HAVE never found undergraduate humour, or comedy about university life, very funny-you know, the sort of

thing that people laughed at so much in Doctor in the House — and. I'm afraid there’s rather too much of it for me in Bachelor of Hearts, the story of a young German student’s encounter with Cambridge. Mainly involved in the nonsense is a group called’ the

Dodos, led by Ronald Lewis, who perform such tasks as bathing at dead of

night at one of the women’s colleges and having nothing to do with women during the last few weeks of term. Still, if you like that sort of thing you will certainly like this film... Wolf Rilla, who directed it, has a light touch-TI recently saw and quite enjoyed his earlier piece, Glad Tidings; and the setting of the film is so pleasant and well observed that it is always easy on the eye. There’s something very agreeable, for instance, about the aftermath of the May Ball. But I must admit that I enjoyed the film most because its heroine is Sylvia Syms. What a lovely creature she is! Opposite her Hardy Kruger plays sympathetically as the young German trying to behave like an Englishman. Thesé two are well matched and

many of their scenes together have a gentle, tender quality which makes the horseplay of the others endurable. Miles Malleson and ‘Eric Barker are among the older hands who undertake to teach the young German the Cambridge way of life.