Adventure for Two
Roland Culver was cut out of this movie.,Beatrice Harrison's cello-and-nightingale broadcasts were mostly in the 1920s, but in any case no live broadcast would have been made during an air raid since it would give information to the enemy. (For this reason recordings were used for Big Ben chimes instead of the live feed when an air raid was in progress.),Ivan Kouznetsoff: I don't understand the English.
Mr. Runalow: My dear fellow, who does?,Opening credits prologue: "Joking decides great things stronger and better oft than earnest can . . .",Referenced in Cinema: Sir Laurence Olivier (1970),Hold Your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy
(uncredited)
Written by Worton David and C.W. Murphy,THE DEMI-PARADISE (original title, UK 1943) is an opportunistic piece of propaganda, with the great Laurence Olivier playing a Russian engineer trying to build a propeller for an ice breaker to operate in the Baltic, with the assistance of obviously superior British engineers.

In the midst of the propaganda against the backdrop of a war that until 1942 had not gone in Great Britain's favor, you even get to see historic pageants, and an apology for the UK colonizing half of the planet.

This film is an interesting document of the mindset of the day, when Great Britain was still the empire on which the sun never set, but it does not really work from a cinematographic standpoint. Photography is average, acting so-so, and the screenplay carries some extremely cheesy holes.

Strikingly elegant Penelope Dudley-Ward conveniently represents Britain's openness to a loving relationship with the USSR, but there's really no chemistry spark between her and Olivier. It's as totally unconvincing a love affair as this is as piece of film-making.

Perhaps the most interesting comment to be made about THE DEMI-PARADISE is that by 1945 Winston Churchill was referring to the Soviet Union as the "iron curtain," and warning about the dangers of the USSR's occupation of Eastern Europe, and by 1948 the Cold War had started in earnest.

Really strange bedfellows, therefore. Thankfully, Dudley-Ward is very easy on the eye, especially when she smiles, but even her beautiful face cannot save this overlong piece of propaganda.

I suffered watching it because of Covid-prompted confinement but rest assured that I'll not watch it again.,