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Really Surprised!

hyped garbage

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

GENEVIEVE is an early car race comedy that precedes all of those American films like THE LOVE BUG and CANNONBALL RUN by many years. Okay, so this is a bit more quaint and genteel - it's an old-fashioned British comedy after all - but it still contains the same kind of knockabout desperate comedy that was the highlight of this particular sub-genre.There are only two cars in this film but they're both delightfully old-fashioned vehicles which are essentially an engine, a wheel, and a chair on a chassis. John Gregson and Kenneth More are the rival racers, although both come off quite badly: Gregson is a bit staid and boring, and More a bit too over the top and annoying. The gorgeous women accompanying them, Dinah Sheridan and Kay Kendall, are quite fantastic and the best thing about the film in my opinion.GENEVIEVE has a bit of an overlong running time and drags out in places, particularly in the early scenes which have no sense of drive or excitement. However, it gets better as it goes along, with some amusing sequences involving the various characters met en route, and it builds to the kind of frenetic, accident-prone action climax familiar from the later movies in this genre; the last half an hour is a delight. No classic then, but it did help to pave the way for what was to come.

When I reviewed the Michael Caine version of "The Italian Job", I stated that it was a film which all red-blooded Englishmen were supposed to love but which I personally didn't care for much. I have similar feelings about "Genevieve", another British comedy involving cars, although these days it probably counts more as a film which all red- blooded Englishmen of an earlier generation were supposed to love. The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run is an annual event held on the first Sunday in November. It is only open to "veteran cars", which for the purposes of the Run means cars made before 1905. (This definition was fixed at the time of the first Run in 1927, and has never been changed since). The film features two young public-school types, Alan McKim and Ambrose Claverhouse, who are veteran car owners eager to participate in the Run. The women in their lives, Alan's wife Wendy and Ambrose's girlfriend Rosalind, are much less enthusiastic but get roped in anyway. The script seems to have been written on the principle that men are nature's enthusiasts and women nature's wet blankets whose main function is to stand around muttering darkly under their breath about how silly men and their enthusiasms are. Wendy seems particularly prone to this sort of wet-blanketry, which means that she and Alan spend a good deal of their time quarrelling and bickering. When Alan isn't bickering with Wendy, he is normally bickering with Ambrose, even though the two are supposed to be friends. After one of their quarrels, Alan bets Ambrose one hundred pounds (a much larger sum in 1953 than it would be today) that he can beat Ambrose in a race back to London. The rest of the film deals with the various tricks and stratagems they come up with in their efforts to win the race. Just why this film became such a classic in Britain has always been something of a mystery to me. I can understand why it might appeal to the veteran car fraternity, who will love Alan's 1904 Darracq (the "Genevieve" of the title) and Ambrose's 1905 Spyker. For a film which is officially supposed to be a comedy, however, it is surprisingly short on jokes. The best section is probably the scene set in that dreadful Brighton hotel where hot water is a tightly-rationed luxury and the manageress treats her guests with the same patronising condescension as Basil Fawlty (although by comparison his establishment looks like the Ritz). The scene where Kay Kendall plays the trumpet does not have much connection to the plot but has become famous, possibly because after her tragically early death Kendall became something of a national treasure and the nation wanted something to remember her by. (Rosalind is the least-developed of the main characters, and this scene apart Kendall does not have a lot to do). Some have seen "Genevieve" as a celebration of British eccentricity in the spirit of the Ealing comedies, and it was indeed directed by Henry Cornelius who had been responsible for one of the greatest of that series, "Passport to Pimlico". To my mind, however, it lacks the generosity of spirit and shrewd social observation which marked the best of Ealing. The plot consists of little more than Alan bickering with Wendy, Alan bickering with Ambrose, Ambrose playing some dirty trick on Alan and Alan retaliating with something equally underhand. The second half resembles nothing so much as a more genteel version of "Wacky Races", with John Gregson and Kenneth More both cast in the role of a bourgeois English Dick Dastardly. Of the two male leads, I think we are supposed to find Alan the more sympathetic, but neither he nor Ambrose ever comes across as much more than an overgrown schoolboy. Of the women, Kendall has little to do except play the trumpet and Dinah Sheridan, with her shrill, cut-glass voice, is positively irritating. When the film was first released, the old cars, less practical but so much more romantic than anything on the road in 1953, were supposed to evoke a spirit of nostalgia for a bygone Britain. Today, of course, all those vehicles from the early fifties no longer seem like the embodiments of a soulless modernity. Indeed, for us they have nearly as much antique charm as Genevieve herself. The whole film, in fact, now seems bathed in a rosily nostalgic glow, and rather than the puerile antics of Alan and Ambrose, it is this vision we get of a kinder, gentler England that acts as the film's main attraction in 2014. Unfortunately, this was a vision which was presumably not intended by the film-makers. 5/10

A delight from start to finish, this film is about an annual car club's trip from London to Brighton. The cars in question are vintage. Alan and Wendy (John Gregson and Dinah Sheridan) travel in their 1904 model, affectionately named Genevieve. Ambrose and Rosilund (Kenneth More and Kay Kendall) have their own vehicle and it soon becomes a rivalry about which car is better. It eventually turns into a race on the way home, in which they have to outsmart each other to win 100 pounds. This is a great film because it relies on the richness of its characters and is filled with scenes that are both amusing and relevant. There is a great scene in which a drunken Rosilund plays trumpet with the band and another when Wendy and Alan have to check into a down market hotel next to a train and a giant clock (watch what happens when the clock strikes nine). In a brief but fun role, the always engaging Joyce Grenfell plays a hotel concierge, but this film is all about Alan, Wendy, Ambrose & Rosilund. The acting is superb. Buy or rent the DVD, since it has an interview with Dinah Sheridan, biographies of the main characters and location shoots. This film is from 1953, but it is completely fresh today and even makes you a bit sad to know this world doesn't exist anymore. Oh well, at least you have this completely wonderful film to watch.

This is one of those films I can just watch time and time again, as indeed we did this evening. It must be 25 years since I first saw Genevieve as an kid; I daren't guess how many times I've seen it since. But every time it still works its magic.It's a comedy, but a gentle one - there's a few real belly laughs to be had, but mostly I'm left with a beatific smile of pure pleasure throughout. The one exception is the scene where dear old Arthur Wontner stops the McKims to admire Genevieve at a crucial point in proceedings; that scene has me welling up with tears every time.The script from William Rose is perfectly judged and paced, and there's enough detail in there to reward multiple viewings. It's quite risqué for 1953, but done in a splendidly subtle way that can only be described as a forgotten art. And as usual, I shall be whistling Larry Adler's magnificent score for days after viewing.I laughed, I cried, I loved the old cars. What more could you ask from a movie? Quite possibly the closest thing to perfection you're likely to see in a movie - and it didn't need special CGI effects and a cast of thousands, just four extremely talented actors, a few old cars and the glorious post-war English countryside.11 out of 10. No, 12! 13!