By the mid-1960s, the British comic actor Norman Wisdom had long ceased to be a
major box office draw, despite some notable successes behind him -
Just My Luck (1957),
The Square Peg (1959),
Follow a Star (1959).
Wisdom's career was in decline for a few years before he
started work on Press for Time,
the last film he made for the Rank Organisation. It did not help
that the film had major weaknesses in both the scripting and directing
departments. The comic situations are painfully drawn out and the
jokes lack the spontaneity and surprise seen in previous Wisdom
films.
Norman's sadly under-used talent for character acting is exploited in
the film's opening sequence in which he plays his familiar Gump
character's doddery grandfather and suffragette mother, a sequence
which offers more laughs than virtually most of what follows.
Despite admirable support from such talented performers as Derek
Francis and Peter Jones (with an amusing cameo from Stanley Unwin),
Norman has a hard job delivering the laughs. The film struggles
to keep going and ends up looking like an asthmatic jogger. This
was very nearly the last nail in the coffin for Norman Wisdom's film career,
although he would still remain a much loved entertainer for many years,
attracting large audiences with his frequent stage and TV appearances.
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Film Synopsis
Who would think that humble newspaper seller Norman Shields is the
grandson of the Prime Minister of Great Britain? The Prime
Minister is less than happy at this revelation, having disowned his
daughter, a suffragette, when she married a sewer man. Norman is
summarily dispatched to the seaside town of Tinmouth to work as a
reporter on the local newspaper, which is run by Conservative MP Major
Bartlett. In no time at all, Norman has managed to wreak havoc in
the town, disrupting a council meeting and wrecking a photo opportunity
for Bartlett and his Labour opponent Alderman Corcoran. The only
person who takes a shine to Norman is Corcoran's sweet-natured
daughter Liz...
Franz Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer not only reveal a soul in torment; they also give us a harrowing self-portrait of a man appalled by his own existence.
The cinema of Japan is noteworthy for its purity, subtlety and visual impact. The films of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa are sublime masterpieces of film poetry.