NO LOVE FOR JOHNNIE: a heady brew of politics and sex from a bygone age

If you can get past the truly terrible title you'll discover an interesting 1961 drama that is both an echo of a bygone age and also truly timeless in the themes it touches on.
The wonderful Peter Finch stars as Labour MP (Member of Parliament) Johnnie Byrne. Newly re-elected to Parliament and now a member of the governing party he's tipped for a government post and is miffed to find he's been overlooked. Adding to his professional disappointment are personal woes - his wife Alice chooses this moment to tell him she's had enough of their loveless marriage and is leaving him. And so, at a time when Johnnie should be feeling on top of the world he finds himself friendless, alone and vulnerable in London. After a brief drunken fling with a neighbour (Billie Whitelaw) he finds himself falling hard for Pauline (Mary Peach) a fashion model young enough to be his daughter, and starts neglecting his Parliamentary duties to spend every possible moment with her.
NO LOVE FOR JOHNNIE is intended as a portrait of an ambitious, ruthless and self-centred man willing to sacrifice relationships and principles in his efforts to get ahead, and plenty of characters in the film spend a lot of time saying this about and to Johnnie (The Prime Minister's private secretary tells him "You're the most unmitigated grasping and self-important bastard I've ever met") but Johnnie never really displays these negative qualities in an abundance deserving of the reputation. For all his supposed self-serving behaviour he's still an anonymous backbencher passed over for government office and stuck in a spectacularly unrewarding marriage. If the intention is for the audience to feel contempt for this character it fails because the overwhelming sensation is of pity. Johnnie's blundering attempts to connect with someone, his besottedness with a woman half his age, his half-hearted participation in an abortive back bench revolt, and his disinterest in constituency affairs hardly makes him a monster even if we disapprove of his attitude and approach.

But while I'm not convinced that this aspect of the script works it's still a very watchable film, and Finch delivers a performance thoroughly deserving of the 1962 BAFTA for Best British Actor. Byrne is a totally believable, fully-formed character loaded down by a lifetime of accumulated flaws and failings that combine to create a mid-life crisis from which he desperately tries to salvage himself. The political manoeuvrings at Westminster and back in Byrne's Yorkshire constituency contribute hugely to the presentation of Byrne as a fully rounded figure, and add fascinating colour and depth to the story.
Given the real life scandals that have erupted in British politics since the film's release in 1961, Byrne's misdemeanors now appear pretty tame but that aura of a lost world just adds to the charm. This is a definite must-see movie for anyone who's serious about film.