John Brooks 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

Irishchatter I came across this film because the mother was flicking through the channels and we decided to give it a watch. I have to admit, it was alright like. I wouldn't call it the best movie I've ever seen. Although it was good seeing Gregory Peck as the main character, I have never seen him as a young man before but I have to say this is my first movie when he was young.I only saw him on the Omen but nothing else until this!I don't have much to say about this movie but, I do consider it watchable!

Robert J. Maxwell Gregory Peck is Henry Adams, a raggedy, good-natured American shipyard worker stranded in London and penniless. Poundless too, and this was 1903 when a pound was worth a pound. He's picked off the street at random by two millionaires of a betting disposition who hand him one of only two existing notes for one million pounds. If he returns the note intact at the end of one month, he'll have any sort of job he wants. Peck doesn't discover until later that he's rich beyond imagining. And he's aghast, as is the suspicious waiter who has just served this ill-groomed customer an expensive meal. Peck tries to return the note but his benefactors are on holiday for the month. It's all up to him.That plot point is a little confusing. Maybe I missed something. But suppose that, instead of giving the note back in a month, Peck just said, "The hell with it," and skipped town? He could live like a Pasha for the rest of his life.At any rate, when the public discovers that Peck has the note, everyone kisses his ring. Tailors give him a free wardrobe, Bumbles Hotel puts him up in the Bridal Suite, London society opens its doors to him, and when rumors start that Peck has invested in the New Hope Gold Mine, the price of shares skyrockets.There are less harmless memes. Nobody has seen the note recently. They've been operating on the sociological principle that "if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." Does he really HAVE such a note or is Peck "an adventurer"? Peck's fortune goes down, then up again, and he winds up in a clinch with Lady Bracknell's niece or something.It's based on a story by Mark Twain, a curious writer. He had a fine sense of irony, perhaps because he'd lived through the Civil War and was even briefly in the Confederate Army. "Tom Sawyer" is a child's adventure story but "Huckleberry Finn" is not. Twain poked understated fun at European pretensions and especially nobility. Huck and Jim pick up two scalawags who get into a quiet conflict over their social status, until one finally admits that he's the lost son of the King of France, which Huck swallows.That European nobility business gets a poke in the eye with a sharp stick in this film. So does capitalism. The question that wafts like a bouquet through the comedy is whether simply having a lot of money is better than being a gentleman. Is it better to be rich or to be a Duke?Peck's forte was never comedy. He seemed by nature to be upright and bourgeois. And, to the extent that he was amusing on screen, rather than only likable, it was because that air of self righteousness was made ludicrous by events. His reaction is always one of masked embarrassment. It requires only the slightest change in his features. He must have had a very good time playing a mad Nazi scientist in "The Boys From Brazil." The cast is filled out with familiar faces from British movies of the period.It may have been written by Mark Twain, whose name is itself a joke, but it's veddy British, colorful, and funny. You'll like it.

Spikeopath Also known as Man With A Million, The Million Pound Note is based on a short story by Mark Twain called "The Million Pound Bank Note". It's directed by Ronald Neame {The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie/The Poseidon Adventure } and stars Gregory Peck {To Kill A Mockingbird/Cape Fear}, Ronald Squire, Joyce Grenfell, Jane Griffiths & Reginald Beckwith .It's Edwardian England and American seaman Henry Adams ( Peck) is stranded and down on his luck. That is until he becomes embroiled in an unusual wager between two wealthy, eccentric brothers, Oliver (Ronald Squire) and Roderick Montpelier (Wilfrid Hyde-White). Giving him an envelope, they tell him that it contains some money but that he must not open it till 14.00. Thinking they are crack pots he goes along with it anyway, and much to his amazement the envelope contains a one million pound note (£1,000,000). It transpires that Oliver believes that the mere existence of the note will enable Adams to obtain whatever he needs without spending a penny, while Roderick contends that it would actually have to be spent for it to be of any use. Hence the bet is on and a promise of a job for Henry if he can go for a month without breaking into the note.Chirpy yet astutely cynical is The Million Pound Note. The laughs come courtesy of the ridiculous way that people react to money and those that have plenty of it. As Henry {a wonderfully cast Peck} moves from penniless bum to upstanding wealthy gentleman, without spending anything, the moral of the story is blatantly obvious. Very much a forerunner to the Eddie Murphy starrer Trading Places in 1983, it also has similarities with Twain's own The Prince And The Pauper, themes that always produce interesting results as regards the human condition. There's the obligatory romance angle in the piece, which thankfully doesn't cloy the picture at all, and Neame has an array of interesting characters from which to keep the story zippy {watch out for a delightful turn from Reginald Beckwith as Rock}. A real safe recommendation this one, across the board it works well, both as a comedy, and as a wry observation. 7/10