There is some addictive raffishness and raciness in this 1964 British black-comedy satire for which screenwriter Frederic Raphael adapts a short story by American mystery writer Stanley Ellin; Clive Donner directs with cinematography by Nicolas Roeg. Alan Bates plays a pushy, plausible young fellow called James Brewster, employed in an upmarket “auctioneer” house – ie estate agent’s – in London’s West End, a firm greedily taking advantage of the construction boom.
Brewster is competent and hardworking but deeply ashamed of his lower-class background and his poor old mum and dad, and suspects he would do much better in the company if he had some patrician polish; his boss Mr Horton (Harry Andrews) is at present more enamoured of his airily entitled colleague Hugh (James Villiers) who is dating Horton’s daughter Ann, played with mischievous sensuality by Millicent Martin, then best known for the TV show That Was the Week That Was.
