This is Robert Fuest's first film, made even before his wonderful work on "The Avengers". As such, it's maybe most interesting for allowing us to observe the way the story- and the writer/director- struggle with the received notion of a British Swingin' Sixties movie (school of Richard Lester) before giving up and heading off in their own direction.
The self-conscious whackiness is set on stun as we're dropped into the story of the marital troubles of a TV director (Francis Matthews wafting enjoyably in and out of his patented Cary Grant impression) and the star of his show (Wendy Craig, giving it three and a half Rita Tushinghams out of a possible five).
This being the capital S sixties, they of course meet lots of Crazy people, including Clive Dunn (pre Corporal Jones, playing a demented German architect in this, the era when such characters could be introduced with snippets of Hitler's speeches on the soundtrack) Denis Price (with "Kind Hearts and Coronets" a memory dissolved in brown ale and only Jess Franco waiting in his future)and Miriam Karlin (post- "Rag Trade", pre- "Clockwork Orange").
At first, only a quick shot seen through the spokes of a bicycle wheel tips us off that this is the same director who made the Dr Phibes films and "The Final Programme". There's a real sense that Fuest is trying- and more or less failing- to get a handle on the capital S sixties. But he seems to realise this and it's then that the film becomes really interesting as an opportunity to see a director's signature style developing before our very eyes. All of a sudden the walls are white, decorated with graphics and typography. Clive Dunn lives in a gonzo-Bauhaus sanctum sanctorum attended by a quartet of Battle of Britain-style fighter pilots who "fly" escort to his limousine in bubble cars. One half expects the smiling face of Patrick Macnee to appear around the door at any moment.
It's all a mess, of course. But an oddly entertaining one, even if it never quite gets off the ground. The story ends with a big party in the "futuristic" house that Wendy has commissioned from Clive, everybody is reconciled with everybody else and they all dance out into the dawn in a scene that manages to cheekily borrow from both Fellini and Bergman.
