Made at a time when Alec Guinness could do no wrong in the British cinema, this is a cleverly commercial adaptation of Arnold Bennett's Potteries novel about a poor-born opportunist who becomes mayor of his local town in the early 1900s. Many fine little individual scenes build up to make an enchanting whole. Guinness is superb and Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson and Petula Clark are finely contrasted as the ladies in his life.

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