This film is compelling for about the first third. British films could do naturalism so effortlessly then. I love the interiors - shabby rooms that still have (50-year-old) Victorian wallpaper, or fireplaces badly converted to ineffective gas fires. And the barber's shop with clients popping in and out and exchanging banter (the street it's in, though, is obviously a set with an omnipresent barrel-organ and someone always cycling carefully by). But then Ann and Eric go and live an idyllic, free, gypsy-like outdoor life on a Thames barge... There are some lovely shots of the riverbank with warehouses and cranes (now dull yuppie flats). The "living on a boat" fantasy was common in the late 40s/50s. Ann Todd as a happy wife seems to regress to childhood, skipping about wearing dungarees and flat shoes and being abominably cute. And the plot starts to roll... I rather like Maxwell Reed as a rule, even though he is wooden and 10 feet tall. But really, his Danish accent!
Review of Daybreak
