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!
Review of Nothing But the Best
