Woman In A Dressing Gown

When the newly restored version of this film was rereleased amidst much publicity in the press, I felt that I ought to watch it to see what all the fuss was about. I was not too encouraged when I looked in my Halliwell’s guide. It is given one star and described as ‘Classic British TV adequately filmed but now rather dated and irritating’. Yvonne Mitchell does indeed give a wonderful performance and she dominates the screen with her presence. At least she has the semblance of a working class accent whereas her son, her husband and his lover have accents that are far too middle class for the setting of a council flat in an inner city area. Unfortunately, in many ways her character came across as rather stupid and yes, somewhat irritating. I also find it hard to believe that anyone’s home could be as untidy as that. As they say less is more – the mess in the house was overdone making it unbelievable. For me the weakest actor in the film was Anthony Quayle who lacked the charisma to convince me that Sylvia Sims (so beautiful and young) could fall passionately in love with him . An interesting film, worth watching but not a classic of British cinema by any means

Astonishing it was made in 1957 Yvonne Mitchell performance is one of the truly great cinema performances Atruly great film

Excellent drama with very believable characters. Unusually realistic portrayal of a woman for a film from this era. Wonderfully reminiscent setting of working class Britain in the 1950s.