Bachelor of Hearts ** (1958, Hardy Kruger, Sylvia Syms, Ronald Lewis) – Classic Movie Review 5944

Director Wolf Rilla’s 1958 British movie stars young German actor Hardy Kruger, whom the Rank Organisation was promoting to turn into an international star, despite the continuing postwar anti-German feeling in Britain and elsewhere.

Kruger rather sweetly plays Wolf Hauser, a foreign exchange student at Cambridge University, leading to some amusingly dated Fifties British satirical comedy shenanigans and to some boring romantic nonsense with his pretty and charming English co-star Sylvia Syms, as Ann Wainwright. Ms Syms, of course says to Kruger, kiss me Hardy. But is Hauser a wolf?

The cheerful, frothy, if all-too-lightweight screenplay is written by two very talented eventual Oscar winners. Frederic Raphael (The Glittering Prizes) is the right man for this script but is composer Leslie Bricusse?

Raphael and Bricusse were both recent graduates of Cambridge University, and drew on their experiences there, but their script was much altered when the producers ordered extensive rewrites as a star-making vehicle for Kruger. There was no German character in the original script.

Also in the cast are Ronald Lewis, Jeremy Burnham, Eric Barker, Newton Blick, Barbara Steele and Miles Malleson.

 © Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5944

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