A Kid for Two Farthings (1955)

Jonathan Ashmore does quite a sterling job here tugging at the heart-strings with this upbeat, feel-good drama about the young “Joe” who just wants to be kind. He’s a young lad growing up in a sort of Portobello Road environment in a post war London that is still recovering. He lives with his mum (Celia Johnson) in small flat above a tailor’s shop run by “Kandinsky” (David Kossoff) who fills his head with imaginative stories and fantasies. It’s this that leads the lad to an idea. He uses every farthing to his name so he can buy a young kid that has yet to develop it’s horns properly. Why? Well, he thinks it will turn into an unicorn and be able to bestow gifts of good luck on those in his tightly knit community who care for him and whom he loves. What now ensues takes a rather good-humoured but still quite poignant look at human nature, nurture and spirit. His are not always rose-tinted experiences and at times his little goat finds itself in quite a pickle, but somehow we just know that good will prevail. It’s easy to be cynical about the naivety and simplicity of this story, but there’s a delightful chemistry on display between an on-form Kossoff and Ashmore partnered with the ever reliable Brenda de Banzie and aspiring the glamour-puss “Sonia” (Diana Dors) that all engagingly taps into the prevailing sentiment at the time that we won the war because we were supposed to and we must all muck in to rebuild - physically and societally. It’s the sheer innocence of the thing that cannot fail to bring a smile to your face, and there’s even a charming “Hercules” on hand in the guise of Primo Carnera’s aptly named “Python” to keep any trouble at bay. Don’t watch this with 2020s eyes, it won’t work - but if you can imagine yourself in a cinema in 1955, the new reign just started and a feeling of optimism abroad in the land, then I think you will enjoy this story of hope and friendship that Carol Reed keeps right ride of sentimentality.