'Chick' Bird is an actor who stars in provincial rep companies but, sacked for sleeping with a producer's wife, he returns to London for another attempt at mainstream success.
Sharing digs with another actor, Chick starts the desperate rounds of Soho casting agents while signing on the dole. He revisits a sometime relationship with struggling actress Judy but she is tiring of his unwillingness to admit his chance has passed him by.
Surviving on day-jobs, Chick is left alone when his flatmate lands a major film role and ponders being forced into 'proper' work like his depressed friend Jack or become a couch-surfing old-timer like aging actor Rutherford.
A day on a breath-freshening mint commercial is successful and he becomes the face of the product. But is he selling out his talent?
Shelf or charity shop? Tentative shelf. As good as it is - and it's worth seeing for it's shots of 1960s London - it seems an unsteady addition to the British Realism genre and unsurprisingly it waited two years before a cinema release - on a double-bill with LORD OF THE FLIES of all things! An excellent cast - Cecil Parker, Billie Whitelaw, Edmund Purdom, Alan Dobie, Derek Francis - even Freddie Mills - give memorable support to Kenneth More who grows in effectiveness as the mood turns somber. There is a telling moment at the climax of the film when a disenchanted More flees the Bacchanalian riot that his party has turned into - there are even two men dancing together...
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