Bitter Harvest

"Jennie" (Janet Munro) is fed up struggling through her mundane life in Wales, and so heads to the bright lights of London where she encounters the decent and loving "Bob" (John Stride). All goes well for them for a while, they are very much in love - but she has a bit of a restless spirit and when ... the manipulative "Karl" (Alan Badel) comes onto the scene it looks like it might be curtains for their idyllic relationship. The rest of this rather procedural drama is interspersed with some flashbacks that illustrate that the past life of "Jennie" is not without it's demons and slowly we begin to reconcile those with her aspirations for a better life. It's a rather disappointing melodrama this, with a cast that don't really gel very well and although Munro is enthusiastic enough on screen, the whole story has a rather predictable nature to it ending with a certain inevitability that I found rather obvious. Badel was always good as the rather sleazy character, and here he does steal what scenes he is in. Otherwise, though, this is an unremarkable drama that might have been provocative in 1963, but is not remotely now. read more