Must See Movie...

hyped garbage

A lot of fun.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Excellent stuff.I'd like to mention first of all that for a 50's film, this was surprisingly laugh out loud funny. Did not expect to be laughing this wholeheartedly at such a production, mainstream humor at the time being pretty thick most of the time.Well, what can be said about this. The story and main idea and narrative from Mark Twain is excellent, full of moral on various levels and in a multitude of aspects, and it's carefully carried out and very well executed here.Cary Grant does very well as the modest American with lots of guts but firstly naturally humble and progressively more and more decisive.This film is all of funny, fun...interesting on a philosophical level as well as in its purely cinematic dimension; that is well structured, with a certain tension always held at just the right dose, and the release well timed at the end. Every scene with a point, pleasant and important to the whole.8/10

"Man with a Million" is one of the few comedy films that Gregory Peck made. Known as a dramatic actor, Peck didn't play characters who could spew witticisms or clever lines, or who went through hilarious antics. But, he could hold his own in comedic situations, as in this film. He is mostly a straight man who gets into situations that are comedic and in which the cast around him are more the sources of humor. I think his best comedy was "Designing Woman" of 1957 with Lauren Bacall. He had some very laughable situations in that film. This movie is based on a Mark Twain short story, "The Million Pound Bank Note," published in 1893. It closely follows the Twain story with a few changes. The one thing I would like to have seen unchanged was the ending in Twain's story. One of the Montpelier brothers is revealed as the stepfather of Portia. The movie was filmed in London and at the Pinewood Studios in England. It was released there in January 1954 under the title, "The Million Pound Note." The J. Arthur Rank Organization made the movie and it was distributed in America by United Artists. The cast are all quite good. Peck is Henry Adams and Jane Griffiths plays the girl he falls for, Portia Lansdowne. Hartley Power is the Adams family friend, Lloyd Hastings. The Montpelier brothers are played by Ronald Squire (as Oliver) and Wilfrid Hyde-White (as Roderick). Joyce Grenfell is Portia's mother, the Duchess of Cromarty. The large supporting cast includes a number of people in various business settings who are very good and humorous with their airs and then humbling demeanor after learning that Adams has a one million pound note. These include George Devine as the Chop House proprietor, John Kelly as the Bumbles Hotel manager, and Maurice Denham as the exclusive tailor, Jonathan Reid. Mark Twain (nee, Samuel Clemens) set a number of stories in England. He was an avowed Anglophile. From his first trip to England in 1872, he fell in love with the culture, the people and the country. But this didn't stop him from poking a little fun at the Brits from time to time. He was taken under wing by the upper-class and wrote glowingly of the people, their love of history and tradition, and the countryside. This story is a soft satire of both England and America. The Duke of Frognal says rhetorically to the Bumbles Hotel manager, "Are you trying to tell me that American money means more than an Englishman's name? I won't stand for it. This country's going to the dogs."This movie is a fine production from the Twain story set in England. It doesn't have rollicking laughter, but it has warmth and an endearing tale amidst the mostly gentle humor. A later film, made in America, did a successful take off on the Twain story. "Trading Places" of 1983 was an adult comedy that starred Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.

The Million Pound Note finds its way into the hands of a penniless American sailor who hasn't a pence to his name as he arrives in the United Kingdom at the turn of the last century. Gregory Peck who plays the sailor by chance runs into two elderly English brothers, Ronald Squires and Wilfrid Hyde-White, both filthy rich and are having an academic discussion around money.They give Peck a million pound note from the Bank of England and the idea is to present himself as an eccentric American millionaire and for one month live off the reputation of that note. Peck's not to pay one shilling or break the note in any way. He's to live strictly on credit for that month, live I might add in a posh London hotel, typically posh for the 1900 or so.Before I watched The Million Pound Note tonight I saw a variation on the same theme in Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts goes to a chic Rodeo Drive store in Beverly Hills and the first time arriving in her hooker working clothes, she's shown the door, but quick. But as Richard Gere said to her, they don't respect people, but credit cards yes, the higher the spending limit, the better.The Million Pound Note was Gregory Peck's first venture into comedy and if you're looking for a lot of gags and belly laughs, skip this film. What you will find is a nice piece of whimsical humor where Peck's essential decency is kind of turned on itself for laughs. He's perfectly willing to be an guinea pig as the two old gents will give him enough money to get back to America.But in this as in so many films, Peck doesn't count on falling in love with young aristocrat Jane Griffiths. She doesn't mind him being penniless or so she tells him, but snooty aunt Joyce Grenfell sure does when word comes out Peck's a fake.The Million Pound Note is a good film with Peck in a perfectly suited character for himself. And it proves the old adage that millionaires are eccentric and paupers are just crazy.

As others have noted this is a one-joke comedy with the joke scarcely strong enough to carry the 90 mins. The movie is at its worst w hen it strains too hard to be funny with much pulling of flabbergasted faces and one ludicrous scene when the `note', obviously on a string, blows away and Peck dementedly chases it through the busy streets of Victorian London.Gregory as the American Everyman excused from the English Class System looks and sounds fine if a little smug in a few scenes where possession of the eponymous note gives him the upper hand.The big cast of British character actors including always enjoyable Joyce Grenfell as a dotty duchess in a slight variation on her usual jolly-hockey sticks character makes this fable on capitalism just about worth a look. Special mention also to A.E. Mathews striking just the right note as an antediluvian peer.I found curious the billing of Ronald Squire and Wilfred Hyde-White, playing the brothers behind the scheme. They have exactly equal time at the beginning and end of the story but Squire is listed second with Hyde-White fifteenth! I'm sure Wilfred of My Fair Lady fame is the one remembered today.Please note alternative title `Man with a Million'