Nothing But the Best (1964)

I last saw this movie over 40 years ago and remember it vividly. I have waited for years for it to appear on DVD and at last I have it. I was surprised to find it has dated but still works very well due to the wonderful performances of Alan Bates and Denholm Elliott coupled with a sharp and witty script from Frederic Raphael. Millicent Martin holds up well in what I think was her first movie as Bates' love interest. it is an excellent black comedy where the viewer roots for the anti-hero throughout with very little censure on his wrongdoings. Alan Bates was a superb actor with real charisma you can only watch him on screen. The film is populated with terrific British actors like Harry Andrews and James Villiers. I even spotted Patti Boyd as an extra in the cafe scene, which rooted the movie firmly in the sixties. Why this has not appeared on TV or on VHS/ DVD in the intervening years since its original release is beyond me.

Jimmy Brewster is London's answer to Joe Lampton.He has a few less rough edges perhaps,and is not such a blatant sexual predator,but his ambitions are the same.Like Lampton he has seen how the other half live and he wants a slice of the pie.How he pursues these ambitions and where they take him form the basis for "Nothing but the best". He befriends down-at-heel public school man Charlie Prince(Mr Denholm Elliot)who teaches him how to look,sound and behave like a gentleman,thus segueing rather neatly from "Room at the top" to "My Fair Lady". There is also an historical allusion here,Charlie Prince - Prince Charlie, Jimmy Brewster - King James,mix it up a bit,and you've got a Young Pretender supplanting the true king.Forty years down the line it's hard to say if any of this was intended,but it certainly added to my enjoyment. When Prince ,using Brewster's money,wins a fortune at the track,Brewster murders him and keeps it for himself.Now he has the last essential attribute of a gentleman,an unending supply of cash,and his new life can begin.And,of course,so it would in real life,but this is the movies(and it's 1964)and his come - uppance must,at the very least,be a strong possibility. Mr Alan Bates plays Jimmy Brewster with evident relish,enjoying a rare opportunity to display his talent for light comedy. "Nothing but the best" is a clever,literate,well acted British film. It follows then that it is hardly ever seen on TV,and,in consequence, largely forgotten.When I see that "Are you being served?"or "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" are about to be shown for the hundredth time I am reassured that the TV companies have faith in the adage that no one ever lost money underestimating public taste.

I cannot recall having even heard of this movie until I saw it advertised in the TV listings as part of a series of British movies otherwise unrelated to each other in any way. The cast is wonderful particularly Denholm Elliot. Alan Bates gives the part the bland vacancy it requires. The song that opens the movie was of its time and was so bad I almost stopped watching. And the rest of the movie is never quite right. The movie tries to tell the story that Lindsay Anderson told so well in O Lucky Man, and falls far short...but most movies fall short of O Lucky Man. It's worth seeing for another reason: it illustrates very well the mentality that led to Margaret Thatcher.

Although this film appears on TV only rarely, I remember almost everything about it from my most recent of several viewings 10 years ago. A young Alan Bates plays an ambitious but lower middle-class clerk in a posh and stuffy London commercial real estate firm. Doomed to menial work by his low class, Bates encounters a poor and alcoholic -- but decidedly upper class -- Denholm Elliot, and makes him a proposition: free room and board and booze money in exchange for lessons on how to dress, talk and act like a proper "Public School" upper-class chap able to socialize with the ruling classes and thus climb the ladder of success. As his lessons progress, apt pupil Bates becomes more and more involved in the lifestyle of his betters, and romantically involved with a beautiful blonde to the manor born. When Denholm Elliot decides to move on with his life and take back his Saville Row suit, gold half-hunter watch and other accoutrements lent to Bates, there's only one thing for Bates to do: murder poor Denholm (and then roger their suspicious but lustful landlady to buy her silence). Things get REALLY fun from here on in, and the question is, will Alan Bates will get caught, or will he get the girl, the partnership position, the Rolls Royce and the country manor? Witty, well-acted, fast-paced, one of the best, most sparkling British comedies of the 60s, and well worth lobbying for to be released on video or DVD!