Nothing but the Best (film)

Nothing but the Best
Directed by	Clive Donner
Written by	Stanley Ellin Frederic Raphael
Produced by	David Deutsch
Starring	Alan Bates Denholm Elliott Harry Andrews Millicent Martin
Cinematography	Nicolas Roeg
Edited by	Fergus McDonell
Music by	Ron Grainer
Distributed by	Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors Ltd. (UK)
Release dates	10 March 1964 (1964-03-10) (London, England)
Running time	99 minutes
Country	England
Language	English
Budget	£175,594

Nothing but the Best is a 1964 British black comedy film directed by Clive Donner and starring Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews and Millicent Martin. The screenplay by Frederic Raphael is based on the 1952 short story "The Best of Everything" by Stanley Ellin.

A young and ambitious businessman hires an unemployed upper-class man to tutor him in a number of life skills.

Plot

James Brewster, a young man starting with a large London firm of estate agents and auctioneers, is ambitious to get to the top. In a cheap café, he meets Charles Prince, a drunken layabout who has everything James wants: effortless upper-class arrogance and impeccable tailoring. In return for a room to live in and loans for drink and betting, Charles agrees to tutor James in the life skills which he thinks are necessary to succeed. By bluff and sabotage, James rises in his firm, catching the eye of the owner and of his only daughter Ann.

Disaster threatens when Charles has a big win and wants to end the deal. James hastily strangles him and his landlady agrees to hide the corpse in her cellar in return for continuing their sexual liaison.

After a long courtship, Ann agrees to marry James and her father makes him a partner in the business. Having conveniently sent his lower-middle-class parents to Australia, James anticipates his success being crowned by a grand society wedding. Ann's father confesses that he has a totally disreputable son who they never see called Charles and developers who have bought the house of James' former landlady find a corpse in the cellar.

Cast

• Alan Bates as Jimmy Brewster
• Denholm Elliott as Charlie Prince
• Harry Andrews as Mr. Horton
• Millicent Martin as Ann Horton
• Pauline Delaney as Mrs. March
• Godfrey Quigley as Coates
• Alison Leggatt as Mrs. Brewster
• Lucinda Curtis as Nadine
• Nigel Stock as Ferris
• James Villiers as Hugh
• Drewe Henley as Denis
• Avice Landone as Mrs. Horton
• Ernest Clark as Roberts
• Willie Rushton as Gerry
• Peter Madden as ex-politician
• Donald Pickering as Adrian Slater
• Howard Lang as Jutson
• Julian Holloway as bank teller (uncredited)

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The theme is Room at the Top [1959] reconstructed for laughs; the cast includes a leavening of people from TW3; and the attitudes are in general nicely ambiguous, so that the film (like TW3 itself) can put on quite a show of social ruthlessness and general audacity without committing itself very far in any particular direction. ... Denholm Elliott plays the 1960s remittance man in rich style, achieving precisely the right suggestion of a mannered insolence still intact, but beginning to fray badly at the edges. He also gets many of the best lines in a script which veers erratically between dialogue which is funny and accurate, and lines which dangerously undermine the film's pretensions to serious social satire. ... All the same, the script is often sharply funny, as well as being consistently inventive in the way it keeps things moving, allowing the director a range of settings and locations which are used up to the hilt. ...The director gets admirable performances from Alan Bates, as the blandly ruthless hero, Harry Andrews as his father-in-law and Pauline Delany as his cat-hugging landlady. Its main asset, however, is its sprucely cheerful good looks: for a supposedly black comedy, Nothing But the Best keeps its spirits up remarkably."

British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Hard, skilful, rather unattractive comedy with interesting social comments on its time."

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "Scripted by Frederic Raphael, photographed by Nicolas Roeg and directed by Clive Donner, this has all the credentials to be one of the best British big-screen satires. There's no denying it's a very funny film, a sort of School for Scoundrels [1960] in a Room at the Top, but the brushstrokes are so broad that there is no room for the finer detail that would have made it a classic. Alan Bates is splendid as a working-class wannabe, but Denholm Elliott steals every scene as an indolent aristocrat who tutors him in the delicate art of being a cad."

External links

• Nothing but the Best at IMDb
• Nothing but the Best at AllMovie
• Nothing but the Best then-and-now location photographs at ReelStreets