2/12/2023

Hmmm! This is really just a rather tacky and contrived vehicle for British comic Eric Sykes ("Harris"). He is a traveling salesman who finds himself - somehow - in a remote Italian village where he is all of a sudden flavour of the month. How come? Well it seems that all of their menfolk have gone off searching for work and the lassies there haven't seen a man for quite a while. To make matters worse - one of the town's esteemed citizens has written from London asking for a bride and unable to decide which, the local squire "Don Calogere" (John le Mesurier) and the priest decide that the selection should be made by their first neutral visitor. "Harris" now has to fend off his own admirers and make a choice that can only divide the town. The joke wears really thin all too quickly, and though the relationship between Sykes and the unapologetically disinterested "Angelina" (Scilla Gabel) is the high point, it still isn't very high. Skyes was an hugely popular comedian in Britain and George Pollock no slouch when it came to movie-making, but here this misfires way more that it works and at ninety minutes is far too long. Not for me, this, sorry.