Product Details

• Actors: Dinah Sheridan, John Gregson, Kay Kendall, Kenneth More, Geoffrey Keen
• Directors: Henry Cornelius
• Writers: William Rose
• Producers: Henry Cornelius, Earl St. John
• Format: PAL
• Number of tapes: 1
• Run Time: 86 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005NFDK
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #484,341 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the best British comedies ever...cannot be missed, June 12, 2006

By 

H. Bala "Me Too Can Read" (Just moved to posh Marina Del Rey, CA - where if you drop a quarter, why, you just keep on walking) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Genevieve [Region 2] (DVD)

In the late 1940s and early '50s, some of the funniest films were being cranked out by the Brits, films of great wit and sly humor. Numbered among these comedies of English manners were the Ealing Studio-produced The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, and Kind Hearts and Coronets. And then there was Genevieve, called "the best Ealing comedy that never was" by the British Film Institute. Director Henry Cornelius, formerly of Ealing Studio, had offered Genevieve to that same film company but was turned down. Big mistake for Ealing.

Genevieve tells the tale of two couples, Alan McKim and his wife Wendy and Ambrose Claverhouse and his model friend Rosalind, who undertake a yearly vintage automobile rally which starts from London and ends at Brighton. En route, both Alan and Ambrose's vehicles take turns in breaking down.The resulting back-and-forth banter, compounded with the surfacing of certain old envies, turns a friendly rivalry between best chums Alan and Ambrose into a serious enmity. In the heat of the moment, Alan and Ambrose engage in a gentleman's bet of one hundred pounds as to who first gets back to London. Things, of course, then proceed to get progressively and comedically insane...

It's always neat (and a bit satisfying) to witness straight-laced, proper Englishmen turn into raving lunatics, reduced to formulating zany schemes and indulging in glorious pettiness. John Gregson as Alan, Kenneth More as Ambrose, and Kay Kendall as Rosalind are tremendous in their madcap roles. This was, in fact, Ms. Kendall's coming-out party and she was touted by critics as the next Carole Lombard. But her potential was never realized as she died of leukemia in 1959, at the age of 33. Lovely Dinah Sheridan is great as Wendy, Alan's patient saint of a wife, providing the futile voice of reason.

Watch for the classic restaurant/club scene in which an inebriated Rosalind picks up a trumpet and plays the title song. See also how a little girl and her ice cream, a parked lorry and an elderly antique car enthusiast can hilariously cramp a racer's style. Oh man, this is a funny, funny movie.

John Gregson, by the way, reportedly didn't drive before this film. In fact, in several long shots, Dinah Sheridan had to give him driving instructions under her breath. And Genevieve, to illustrate the whimsy so inherent in these classic British comedies, is not the name of a woman character in the movie but is Alan's 1904 French-made Darracq vintage automobile.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Genevieve ~ A great British Comedy, December 7, 2007

By 

J. Simpson "sfraziera" (Lansing, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This British comedy pits two couples and their vintage roadsters against one another in a cross-country race. This was a great movie in its day, and is much better than American road race movies.
I was a young boy when saw Genevieve (1953) in a theater in Berkeley, California in the early 1950's when it was first released. My parents had taken me along with one of my dad's faculty friends to see the movie. She was recovering from surgery at the time and literally came very close to busting her stiches. We laughed and laughed and laughed.
I am glad to see that a DVD is out, even if is a foreign edition.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best British comedies ever...cannot be missed, September 21, 2008

By 

H. Bala "Me Too Can Read" (Just moved to posh Marina Del Rey, CA - where if you drop a quarter, why, you just keep on walking) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

In the late 1940s and early '50s, some of the funniest films were being cranked out by the Brits, films of great wit and sly humor. Numbered among these comedies of English manners were the Ealing Studio-produced The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, and Kind Hearts and Coronets. And then there was Genevieve, called "the best Ealing comedy that never was" by the British Film Institute. Director Henry Cornelius, formerly of Ealing Studio, had offered Genevieve to that same film company but was turned down. Big mistake for Ealing.

Genevieve tells the tale of two couples, Alan McKim and his wife Wendy and Ambrose Claverhouse and his model friend Rosalind, who undertake a yearly vintage automobile rally which starts from London and ends at Brighton. En route, both Alan and Ambrose's vehicles take turns in breaking down.The resulting back-and-forth banter, compounded with the surfacing of certain old envies, turns a friendly rivalry between best chums Alan and Ambrose into a serious enmity. In the heat of the moment, Alan and Ambrose engage in a gentleman's bet of one hundred pounds as to who first gets back to London. Things, of course, then proceed to get progressively and comedically insane...

It's always neat (and a bit satisfying) to witness straight-laced, proper Englishmen turn into raving lunatics, reduced to formulating zany schemes and indulging in glorious pettiness. John Gregson as Alan, Kenneth More as Ambrose, and Kay Kendall as Rosalind are tremendous in their madcap roles. This was, in fact, Ms. Kendall's coming-out party and she was touted by critics as the next Carole Lombard. But her potential was never realized as she died of leukemia in 1959, at the age of 33. Lovely Dinah Sheridan is great as Wendy, Alan's patient saint of a wife, providing the futile voice of reason.

Watch for the classic restaurant/club scene in which an inebriated Rosalind picks up a trumpet and plays the title song. See also how a little girl and her ice cream, a parked lorry and an elderly antique car enthusiast can hilariously cramp a racer's style. Oh man, this is a funny, funny movie.

John Gregson, by the way, reportedly didn't drive before this film. In fact, in several long shots, Dinah Sheridan had to give him driving instructions under her breath. And Genevieve, to illustrate the whimsy so inherent in these classic British comedies, is not the name of a woman character in the movie but is Alan's 1904 French-made Darracq vintage automobile.