User Reviews

I saw this movie as a young college student not long after it first came out. Hayley Mills was one of my favorite actresses at the time. Pretty well all girls of my era idolized, envied, and wanted to be just like her. She's a lovely lady still, beautiful accented voice, and wonderful actress. It was a thrill of a lifetime when I saw her on the London stage in 1975 in A Touch of Spring; she's even lovelier in person than on screen. Hayley's perfect here, sort of bubbly, sweet, wide eyed, and eager in the role of the young bride, Jenny. By the way, just as a point of interest for those who might not know, she married (though later divorced) this film's much older director, Ray Boulting, who was 33 years her senior.

This movie tells the story of the marital difficulties of two young newlyweds, Arthur and his virginal bride Jenny, who live with Arthur's working class parents (presumably having no choice for financial reasons). The flat's thin walls prove a problem; Arthur becomes impotent and the couple is unable to consummate the marriage. Their affairs, or lack thereof, become the topic of conversation among interfering family members and the gossip of the neighborhood which, as you might predict, does not prove an asset to Arthur's situation. This unusual (for that era) and touching theme is sensitively portrayed. Times may have changed but believe it or not, I think it's a subject that's still relevant even in the modern Viagra era. Lots of sexual dysfunction issues of one sort or another for modern couples today.

Apparently there were other significant family relationship stories in this picture, especially mother / father / son interactions, but frankly, after all these years, I don't recall any of the details. I would love to watch this film again now, especially as some reviewers seem to indicate that the movie actually revolves more around these issues than the question of Arthur's performance. One commented that the impotency was merely a sub-plot. Naturally the main focus in a movie is invariably the juicy sexual aspect, and I confess that's what I focused on myself when I saw it years ago.

Hayley's real life father, John Mills, plays her father-in-law (Arthur's dad) so it was interesting seeing father and daughter on screen together. They also star together in the much earlier 1959 film Tiger Bay. He's brilliant of course in all his roles, especially the village idiot in Ryan's Daughter.

The film generated a great fuss about it being Hayley's first grown up part, accustomed as we all were to her starring childhood roles in Pollyanna, The Parent Trap etc. Too much has been made of the infamous bathtub scene and the revealing glimpse (actually brief, tastefully done, and not terribly risqué) of Hayley's derriere.

This is a marvelous, highly under rated, currently virtually unknown film of British working class family life...a kitchen sink movie, they seem to be calling it. Even after thirty years, it has left a good impression on me and I recommend it.

Young British working-class newlyweds are having trouble consummating their marriage whilst living with the in-laws, and it gets even worse when neighbors start speculating about the groom's "performance". A realistic play on a modern-day situation that is still timeless. The elders in this film are especially amazing, their roles full of dimension, though everyone here excels with the solid, no-frills screenplay. This is one of Hayley Mills' best movies, as she exhibits a strong, self-assured presence and lends nuances to every scene (she's captivating). Paul McCartney contributed the background score, and his main theme is lovely. A fine film. *** from ****

I first saw 'The Family Way" when it was first released. I enjoyed it then. I found it funny and sad at the same time. My date thought it was rather boring.

Thirty years later I saw it again on Cable-TV and I've even recorded it so I can share it with my wife (not the woman I dated way back when). I've read many of the comments made by previous posters and I agree with

most of them.

It is a very funny and very moving story. The young couple have problems from the very start: the "prank" on their wedding night and the disappointment the day after. Having to live with his parents because they can't get a "flat" or anything else would tend to put a crimp in anyone's love life.

The final confrontation and resolution between husband and wife is simply great. The addition of Beethoven at the end of that scene underscores the sense of victory over all the adversity. Benny Hill couldn't have done it any better and I think he did try...

John Mills clearly steals any scene he's in, even from the newly weds. The final scene in the movie isn't to be missed. It's what he doesn't know that makes it soo good.

At one time I had the novel based on the film, but it's long lost.

The sound track, written by Paul McCarthy, is great. If only he'd written more like that...

A pithy if at times slightly unsubtle British comedy set in working class Bolton, Lancashire, the story concerns young newly-weds Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills, the latter in her first adult role, whose marriage gets off to a faltering start with an unconsummated wedding night at his parents' house and then a cancelled honeymoon trip to Majorca.

As it will in a small neighbourhood, news of Arthur and Jenny's "problem" leaks out via a network of nosey neighbours heaping more pressure on the young lad to do his duty so to speak, while in the background he also has to contend with a lack of support from his vulgar old dad, his better-looking younger brother chasing after Jenny and cheap derogatory remarks from his boorish boss at the cinema where he works as a projectionist.

Matters come to a head when Arthur reacts to one jibe too many from said boss and then returns home early, determined to leave town, until Jenny confronts him as he's packing his bags and the heat of an argument gives way to the heat of passion...

There's a neat back story concerning Arthur's true parentage and which helps explain the sudden disappearance of dad's best mate years before and why his two sons don't resemble each other, pivoting round a fine, knowing performance by Marjorie Rhodes as the long-suffering wife and the lad's sympathetic and supportive mother. John Mills stars as said dad and husband, who with his symbolic wearing of belt and braces personifies but slightly overdoes the windy Northerner dad but daughter Hayley and Bennett are charming and believable as the beleaguered lovers.

The leads get good support elsewhere from familiar faces like John Comer, Liz Fraser and Barry Foster and good use is made of actual locations in and around mid-60's Bolton, with a pleasant, pastoral-leaning soundtrack in the background which I suspect owed more to George Martin than the highly publicised accredited Paul McCartney at the time. Funny, but I kept expecting the main acoustic guitar theme to break into 'Stairway To Heaven" all the time!

Despite occasional lapses into cliche and regional stereotyping and excusing a clumsy allusion to possible homosexuality on Bennett's part, the film mostly takes an awkward subject and manages it well both for comedic and dramatic effect, even inserting a cheeky, no pun intended, shot of Miss Mills' bare behind at one point.

Shot in bright colour, when black and white might have served its kitchen-sink appeal better, this was still a typically perceptive and breezy Boulting Brothers production which got there in the end.

This is not so much a movie as a filmed play. The acting is paramount in The Family Way, and I personally have never seen a more moving performance than the one John Mills gives here as Ezra Fitton, father of Arthur Fitton, Hywel Bennett's character who is newly wed to Jenny Piper, played by Hayley Mills. Marjorie Rhodes gives a superb performance as Arthur's mother. The emotion comes from the interplay of the characters, particularly the relationship between the two parents and between the father and his son.

The plot involves the travails of the young couple trying to get to know each other while still being forced, through economic necessity, to live with the parents. Arthur is a hyper-sensitive lad, out of place in the solidly working-class Fitton household. The father plainly doesn't know what to make of him and the two of them are verbally sparring throughout much of the picture.

Against this backdrop, the main storyline concerns the failure of the new marriage to "gel" in the words of Jenny's father as he tries unsuccessfully to explain the problem to Ezra. There is much social comedy along the way, but finally, the underlying story that explains the whole situation comes into focus, and the relationship between the father and son is suddenly illuminated.

The moment is incredibly moving and unforgettable and captures the essence of the father/son relationship in a way that I have never seen more eloquently expressed.

Kind of like a British John Hughes film. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Some nice family conflict stuff and the performances, as befits Brit acting, are uniformly good to excellent (The Millses and Marjorie Rhodes being in the later category). Did grow a bit bored with the impotence angle, though. Give it a B minus.

Jenny Piper (Hayley Mills) and Arthur Fitton (Hywel Bennett) are young people in an industrial British town getting married. They have to navigate various traditional attitudes. After the wedding, they stay at his family home and it's a family comedy drama.

Of course, I'm most interested in seeing Hayley Mills who did the iconic The Parent Trap some five years earlier. She's moving away from the squeaky clean Disney image and turning into a young woman on the big screen. This is a fun little British working class comedy. It's lovely. The actors are all excellent. It's a slice of family life and a bit of British bureaucracy.

I remember back in the day the big buzz about The Family Way was it marked the adult film debut of Hayley Mills. After years of doing fresh scrubbed Disney productions, Hayley was going to do an adult role. And the big news was, it was about SEX.

But when they went to see The Family Way, what Hayley's fans got was a touching life drama about a pair of newlyweds who can't seem to get the deed done. Hywel Bennett and Mills play the young couple and they are an appealing pair.

Bennett and Mills like any other newlyweds would probably just like some privacy, but they can't get any due to family friends, especially Bennett's father who is played by John Mills. This is a most different Mills than what we saw in such films like Great Expectations, Tunes of Glory or Scott of the Antarctic. He's a working class guy from Lancashire, very coarse and rough in his ways, but in the end does show a kind heart.

The game plan is for Hayley and Hywel to get married, spend the wedding night at Hywel's place and then take off for a honeymoon trip. What John Mills decides in a really brilliant move is to keep the party from the wedding reception going over at his place. And then Hywel's clod of a boss, Barry Foster, sneaks into the newlyweds room and loosens the screws of the bridal bed. All in the spirit of good clean fun, but it does spoil the moment and Hywel has a performance problem.

Hayley's character is not all that different from those she played at Disney. She's a sweet young thing who's showing a bit of understandable sexual frustration. Especially after the newlyweds discover the travel agent absconded with their money along with many others. They're now forced to spend two weeks in the house with Bennett's parents. Doubly frustrating because Bennett's younger brother Murray Head is also around. If you'll remember five years later Murray Head was the lust object of Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday. He's looking just as yummy in The Family Way.

Apart from some brief shots of Hayley Mills's derrière which would not raise a ripple today, there's no nudity, no filming of the deed. In fact if it wasn't that it was Hayley Mills I doubt it would have made any noise even back then.

Best performance in the film though is that of Marjorie Rhodes as Bennett's very wise mother. She suspects a problem, but has a great deal of difficulty just persuading her husband to just let things work themselves out. In fact during the course of the film she confesses an ancient indiscretion herself, showing she does understand far more than anyone realizes.

Best moment in the film is Liz Fraser delivering a truly terrific put-down to Barry Foster who is her husband after he and Bennett duke it out and Bennett is fired. Has to be seen to be appreciated.

The Family Way is one of the best British productions of the Sixties. Paul McCartney wrote the original musical score for the production and the film is shot on location in Lancashire giving it a real feel for the British working class. And it was interesting seeing those Beatle inspired fashions from back in the day.

Originated as an ITV Armchair Theatre presentation in 1961, subsequently extended into a stage play and then extended and opened up for this 1966 film. All good and it is well worth a watch if only for the splendid performance from the very pretty Hayley Mills and the solid performance by her dad as her father in law. Trouble is a lot happened culteurally in those five years and this is not really dealt with properly in the film. It would have been much better to keep this in a 50s milieu instead of strapping on a couple of swinging sixties elements and making do. The original TV presentation is included on the StudioCanal disc and this works fine but opening this up with 60s elements makes for some awkward moments and poor Hywell Bennett as the young newly wed who can't perform begins to look decidedly creepy. The McCartney score, I found extremely underwhelming and even annoying but Hayley carries the day with much of the original Bill Naughton dialogue still shining through.

A wonderful story of the human condition in working class 1960's England. The screenwriter has an almost Shakespearean feel for his characters - an understanding of these people, their way of living, and what matters to them. We can see ourselves in these people, hence we care about them deeply.

The quality of the acting is superb. John Mills, one of the best English screen actors ever, is incredible as the father of the Groom. His character is rough and boorish and totally thoughtless when his newly-wed son and bride are forced to share his family's poor flat. Dad is more concerned with memories of his long lost buddy "Billy" than he is with the lives of his own wife and family. Yet somehow Mills lets us feel a sensitivity behind this character that wrenches the viewers heart at the end of the movie.

The plot here is straight forward and simple, a vehicle for us to get to know these characters. Mills' son and the son's bride are forced to live with Mom, Dad, and family in a thin walled flat. Among other problems, the proximity of family leads the groom to a bout of impotence. The thin walls soon have the whole family, and soon the entire neighborhood aware of our hero's problem. Females tend to be sympathetic to our guy, guys tend to tease him or offer advice (pre-viagra days). One particularly sleazy character promises to get the job done for him. And the bride seems somewhat taken by this creep. Problems naturally ensue.

Mills' daughter Haley is cast in her first roll as an adult, playing her real-life father's daughter-in-law. She pulls off the change from child to adult actor flawlessly, she's a delight. The rest of the cast is strong and oh so believable. The Mom in this story has the heart and courage of an Edith Bunker with none of the ditziness.

This film probably made no top 100 lists because it is so topical and set so much in its own time and place. Try watching it as you would a Shakespeare play, put the surroundings away and enjoy the study of the human condition.

I had first heard of "the family way'" because I'm a Beatles buff and Paul McCartney wrote the music arranged by his producer George Martin;I did not expect much from the film and I was wrong. Hindsight displays its charm....

.....the charm of things of long ago,which lingers on after so many years,after the sexual revolution, the pill, the woman's lib ..... It's because it's a dated film that "family way" possesses considerable appeal ,even for today's audience .

The problems of Benett to consummate his marriage make sense : people put so much pressure on him that it's almost unbearable: the girl's family always present for they live in her native house, the so called friends ' heavy jokes,the gossipies all around, even the town and its shops ....It's a comedy,because one knows ,that with a bride as gorgeous as Hayley Mills , the unfortunate groom is not a desperate case!

Even the parents have to make amends in the end ; the wife evokes her honeymoon and the bizarre "ménage à trois" she had to endure ; the end of the movie belongs to John Mills , who after the newly weds' departure ,almost breaks down.

There's also Murray Head ("say it ain't so Joe" ,"Jesus Christ Superstar ") as the brother-in-law.

I had seen this before a long time ago, but this time around I was disappointed. It was very pedestrian for much of the time and the humour was very sparse, only turning up in the final 30 minutes. The familiar at the time cast was interesting but didn't really have a big impact. The score was very good. Written by Paul McCartney and produced by George Martin it really stood out right from the opening. Written around the time of Sgt Pepper it was very different to normal scores of the day.

A late entry to the British kitchen sink cycle, which suggests that if there was one thing that the upstanding, chapel going, gossipping classes disapproved of more than sex before marriage, then it was failing to fulfill one's conjugal duties afterwards. Which is unfortunate for a willing, but unable, Hywell Bennett and his virginal bride, portrayed by a divine Hayley Mills. Bennett is good, and Mills is suitably wide eyed and adorable, which in fairness is all the script really asks of her, but the film belongs to the senior cast members. John Mills, ironically portraying his real life daughter's father-in-law, succeeds in being comical and pathetic yet immensely noble, and Marjorie Rhodes is equally compelling as his wife, who loves, yet at times, quietly loathes him. The Family Way is a touching and amusing look at the social mores of Northern England circa the mid-sixties, and a chance to see Hayley Mills' bare bottom!

THE FAMILY WAY is a Boulting Brothers comedy-drama in which Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills team up for the first of three times during their careers (the other two efforts were the horror picture TWISTED NERVE and the psycho-thriller ENDLESS NIGHT). This is a much more sedate affair about a couple of young newlyweds finding it difficult to consummate their marriage after being forced to move in with the husband's family.

The thing that this film kept reminding me of was LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE. The Yorkshire setting and the broad accents, not to mention the costumes and look of the film, and the presence of Kathy Staff as the nosy neighbour, make the similarities difficult to ignore. And like LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, this is largely a character-focused comedy in which various conflicts between personalities come to the fore and play out throughout the running time.

I found John Mills a little incongruous cast as a Yorkshireman although he gives the usual professional performance. Bennett has the meatiest role as the conflicted youngster while Mills just has to act lovely, which she does very well, although she does show a bit more mettle towards the end. THE FAMILY WAY is no classic but fans of the actors and era should enjoy it regardless.

Fear not, I am not going to reveal what I consider to be one of the best lines in all cinema, as spoken by John Mills in this English classic. I agree completely with jw-8's comments on this. Now everybody knows Rhett Butler's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." That is not actually the last line in Gone With The Wind, and I am not going to risk being blacklisted for telling you the actual last line in The Family Way either. Just take it from me, if you get a chance to see this movie, give it a look. I see that it is billed here as a comedy, I think it would be much better labelled "drama".

This stands alongside "Its a wonderful life " as something sure to make any intelligent viewer laugh and weep with delight - which is no easy task for a hardened film fan and curmudgeon such as I. I cringe at sentimentality and so much formulaic drama but this sweeps you up, takes its time to draw you in with laughs from delightful performances and a genius script of delicate and succinct storytelling. We the audience, see all the pieces of a small puzzle fit together beautifully. By the end you will gasp with delight at the resolution. Ignore or enjoy the dated setting and period, - this film is not about England in the 1960s its about heart, family and genuine everyday love, with understated and underrated power. One of the greatest movies you have never heard of!!

There is quite a fun dynamic on display here from Hayley Mills ("Jenny") and her new husband "Arthur" (Hywel Bennett) as they have to make their way in a new married world fraught with difficulties. They have little money, so live with his well meaning but slightly domineering parents "Ezra" (John Mills) and "Lucy" (Marjorie Rhodes) and an accident with their bed puts paid to any hanky-panky! Their honeymoon is aborted after it transpires the travel agent has absconded with their money and gradually they discover that their lives are the subject of the wagging tongues all around town. The comedy is gently effective here. This could be a depiction of many new marriages where even the most loving of couples are having to get used to the stresses and strains of a new way of living. Mills is on great form; Avril Angers and John Comer support well as her parents "Liz" and "Leslie" and this adaptation leaves much of the original humour from Bill Naughton's play intact for us to enjoy. What makes this enduring is that it is quite touching. A score from Paul McCartney is also notable though maybe more because he wrote it (not because it's especially memorable). You can share in the laughs, but you also sympathise with this couple as they try sort themselves out and stay sane! Those of us of a certain age might well find this resonates a bit, and still relate to it too - even if, on occasion, it makes you cringe a bit!

Not being born when this film was made, I didn't see it until it was shown on TV during the 80's when I was a teenager. I fell in love with it and the memory of the film stayed with me. Although the film hasn't been on TV often enough, I watched it every time it was.

The writing is so brilliant, the acting is spot-on and the atmosphere of the 60's is caught superbly. There is some cracking dialogue in this film, with some of the best lines delivered by Marjorie Rhodes as Lucy Fitton. All of the major characters shine! At last this film has been released on DVD. I pre-ordered it to make sure of getting it as fast as possible. If I never buy another DVD again, it doesn't matter, because I've finally got this one. It's FABULOUS!!

This film, although made before i was born is still one of my favorite films, Sir John Mills shows his best ever performance, i don't need to tell you the story as you've read the reviews above but the ending is still one of the most powerful i have ever seen, and humbles me to know its only words, fantastic.

The Family Way gives an honest look into two generations of a working class family - each generation trying to live up to other's expectations.

The sexuality of more than one male character is questioned and the way that topic is handled is what makes this film unique and memorable.

Deep, beautifully performed, romantic, dramatic and very entertaining.