Wolf Rilla did his best with this film, but it ended up looking like a fluffy cake in the shape of Cambridge, well beyond its sell by date. A few years earlier it may have worked but by 1958 it appeared still looking pretty visually but stale. John Osborne had written ' Look Back in Anger ' and from America ' Blackboard Jungle ' and ' Rebel Without A Cause ' had shaken up the insides of schools. But here in this meandering film the relentless high jinks of privileged youth and secret ceremonies still reigned causing mock havoc. Throwing Hardy Kruger as an exchange student in a mock execution into the relentlessly punting river was still ' fun ' and as the British take a long time in growing up it may still continue. Sylvia Syms is utterly wasted as Kruger's girlfriend ( not that much chemistry showed ) and Ronald Lewis tried to be funny as a fellow student but they all must have known that there was very little to do with their roles. The one plot highlight was Kruger on a hunting search for women for his fellow students to take to a ball, and that should have been cut out or shortened. It was boring and sexist and the ultimate insult was that the ' girls ' once rounded up like cattle seemed to like their moronic companions. I dreaded a joke about the Germans and ' the War ' but Rilla fortunately avoided that, and I give it a 5 for showing a boringly normal German, unlike the usual stereotyped Germans in the endless War heroics cluttering up the British film industry. For that one important element the film was refreshing.
Review of Bachelor of Hearts
