Charing Cross Road

Not many people are aware that before John Mills became the ubiquitous war hero in films of the 40s,50s and 60s that he was a song and dance man.Mind you he was not perhaps the best he was certainly never going to be any sort of a challenge to Jack Buchanan.I have to say firstly that the DVD copy i have is a 46minute Pathescope edition of the film so it is missing 26minutes.Pathescope used to issue these cut down versions in the long defunct 9.5 mm sound gauge.It is lucky that they did as most of the pre 1939 British Lion films are supposed to have been accidentally destroyed in the Second World War.The story is a bit tenuous and told in a rather irritating fashion.Partly in flashback and partly in the first person.The musical numbers are by and large photographed in a totally unimaginative way ,positioning the camera in the front stalls.Indeed it could have been an early talkie for all the imagination used.The finale is a fairly reasonable number.however this films main interest is in seeing John Mills before he appeared in uniform on screen.