Review of Bond Street

Episode films like this tend to be uneven. In "The Pearl," the second of the four segments all set in London's exclusive shopping district after World War II, we have the most satisfying and visually interesting piece, a sort of noir short story. Derek Farr plays a crook on the run through the wet, shadowy night streets after robbing a jewelry store. He lands up in the apartment of a woman of the streets, who has also just committed a crime, stealing bills from a drunken older man who's flirted with her.While a brief romance develops between these two cynical, hard-bitten thieves, a pearl that has fallen out from Farr's loot,near an old woman sleeping on the street, leads to his being eventually captured by the police after he has shot his lover, and fled over the roofs into the floor show of a night club. The first episode, The Wedding Dress,has some interesting social commentary on class resentment during this period as frustrated,struggling seamstress Kathleen Harrison rips the dress she's supposed to get ready for a seemingly spoiled rich woman who's in a hurry. Her fellow workers show their solidarity by staying late to help her patch it up. In a twist the rich woman is shown to have problems of her own and the two land up bonding with each other In the third episode, The Veil, there is a nice performance by Leslie Howard's son Ron as a young commercial salesman who helps a woman in a clothing repair shop fend off her sleazy blackmailing husband. The fourth episode, The Flower, is more humorous and cute. Hollywood actor Roland Young is droll as the father of a bride to be who flirts with the bridegroom's old flame, a Scandinavian blonde the groom met during the war who has suddenly turned up.There is some topical commentary on postwar austerity as the restaurant they go to doesn't have some of the food the Scandinavian woman would expect to be able to order. There are other funny scenes where they go to a music business to request an obscure Danish drinking song and where Young manages to cleverly get ahead of the others in a line waiting for airplane tickets, which are much in demand. All in all this is a well produced entertainment. Though Gordon Parry is the director, and Terence Rattigan one of the writers, the true auteur of this portmanteau is producer/co-writer Anton De Grunwald, who would make similar episode films later, and with more big stars, even more elegance, and color, such as "The V.I.P.s" and "The Yellow Rolls Royce."