Posted: Tue., Dec. 31, 1957, 11:00pm PT

Bachelor of Hearts

(UK)

By Variety Staff

Independent Artists. Director Wolf Rilla; Producer Vivian A. Cox; Screenplay Leslie Bricusse, Frederic Raphael; Camera Geoffrey Unsworth; Editor Eric Boyd-Perkins; Music Hubert Clifford; Art Director Edward Carrick

Hardy Kruger Sylvia Syms Ronald Lewis Miles Malleson Eric Barker Barbara Steele

Bachelor of Hearts is a switch on A Yank at Oxford, and might have been more simply titled A German at Cambridge. It is a facetious, rather embarrassing glimpse of life at Cambridge University. Since the screenplay was written by two ex-Cambridge students it must be assumed to be authentic. In which case, some rather adolescent malarkey appears to go on at the university.

The thin yarn has Hardy Kruger as a German student on an exchange scholarship system. At first treated with suspicion, he proves himself a good fellow, passes his exams and falls in love. But the story is only an excuse for some predictable situations and jokes. This might have been acceptable had there been more wit, but the wisecracks mostly depend on the young German's inability to understand the English idiom or the traditional behaviour at the university.

Kruger, who made a big impression with his first British pic, The One That Got Away, is less happy in this comedy. But he has a pleasant personality to make his slight love affair with Sylvia Syms acceptable.

(Color) Extract of a review from 1958. Running time: 94 MIN.