It Started in Paradise

The late Bob Baker in 'Film Dope' dismissed British cinema of the fifties as "battleship grey", but that simply made its Technicolor productions glow all the brighter by comparison (even those by the dreaded Herbert Wilcox).

As befits a film based on a novel by a woman (Marghanita Laski), the men are all pretty inert (although all the best lines go to a camp old columnist played by Ronald Squire); while being the fifties the women are of course fabulous. The photography by Jack Cardiff, sets by Edward Carrick and - inevitably - the clothes by Sheila Graham (although the 'working' clothes worn throughout the film by the women look far cooler to modern eyes than the often absurd creations seen paraded on the catwalk) engage throughout this film's duration in an unrelenting assault on the senses that leaves one at the end exhausted but exhilarated.