Genevieve (1953)

Very much in the spirit of the "Ealing Comedies", this is a simple and engaging story of two chaps - "Alan" (John Gregson) and "Ambrose" (Kenneth More) who bet each other the princely sum (in 1953) of £100 on which of their vintage cars can race the 50-odd miles from London to Brighton quickest. Dragging their reluctant partners "Wendy" (Dinah Sheridan) and "Rosalind" (Kay Kendall) along too, we embark of a fun series of escapades as they test the limits of their friendship, the patience of the police (a nice effort from Geoffrey Keen) and their respective engineering. The photography is colourful and the cars almost as temperamental as their increasingly competitive drivers. Kendall is probably the star for me - pushing a car from an huge puddle was definitely not what she signed up for; and the ending is quite literally neck-and-neck. There is plenty of light-hearted humour to be had, and Larry Adler has composed a suitably jolly score to accompany their automotive antics. All good fun!