Puffin Asquith rarely turned out a mediocre movie and arguably shot more first-rate films than any of his contemporaries, indeed, if he had made nothing other than The Browning Version in 1951 his place in the pantheon would be secure. In fact he worked with Terry Rattigan on several occasions and it was after shooting the film version of Rattigan's TV play The Final Test that he shot this modern take on Romeo and Juliet updated to the Cold War with the star-crossed lovers (Odile Versois and David Knight) respectively Russian (though this is not so much spelled out as implied) and American. It's interesting that two years later Peter Ustinov wrote a play entitled Romonoff and Juliet in which one of the lovers was unequivocally Russian, and one year after that came West Side Story which translated the same plot into Puerto Rican and American street gangs. Buffs of fifties British films will be in their element with the likes of Josef Tomelty, David Kossoff, Paul Carpenter (Canadian but a fixture, albeit a wooden one, in UK movies of the period), Joan Sims, uncredited as a switchboard operator and even Theodore Bikel, a long way from home, as the secretary to the Russian? Minister. Odile Versois, who graced several British films in the mid fifties, is suitably lovely and fragile whilst in his debut David Knight convincingly conveys the essentially decent lover. Puffin weighs in with some interesting set-ups and catches the mood of the times and all in all it's a minor charmer.
Review of Chance Meeting
