Customer Reviews
One of the finest films you'll ever see ... - By: hmcni, 18 Jun 2007 
I found this film by accident on a TV channel about a year ago & have been dying for it to be released on DVD. I am delighted that my wish has finallly come true.
It is a wonderful tense wartime spy drama & splashes of comedy. George Cole turns in a fantastic performance in his first major film role & the casting is inspired & perfect.
This is definitely one to add to the DVD collection!
A fine home-front spy mystery from 1941, with Alastair Sim - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 12 Jun 2007 
Wordy? A little. But this British home-front spy mystery from 1941 is also fine entertainment, reasonably exciting & features two first-rate performances by Alastair Sim as the suspicious Charles Dimble & 16-year-old George Cole as the 15-year-old London kid, Ronald, resourceful & energetic. Ronald thinks Sherlock Holmes is "the greatest man whatever lived" & is pretty good at deducing things. Bear in mind that Sim & his wife took Cole into their household when he was a boy & became Cole's foster parents. Sim saw to Cole's education. When Cole wanted to become an actor like Sim, Sim also saw to Cole's training. They appeared together in more than a dozen movies, not as a team but as two skilled comic actors.
John Barrington (Leslie Banks) is a brilliant, eccentric British inventor. He works at his grand manor house in Scotland & has almost developed a revolutionary bomb sight. The Nazis want his secrets, preferably with Barrington as well. Barrington has a flighty, well-meaning wife (at one point she kindly tells Ronald, who has nearly destroyed a suit of armor, "Never mind, never mind. Just forget what a nuisance you are.") & a good-looking daughter. He also has an assistant who longs for the daughter. Suddenly the cottage on their grounds, which had been up for rent, is taken over as a military hospital. In it goes Flight Lieutenant Perry (John Mills), a Spitfire pilot who had to bail out & landed in a nearby loch with a bad arm. Then there's Dimble, who says he had arranged to rent the cottage & now has nowhere to stay. He's put up in a room next to Perry. There's young, confident Ronald, sent up from London because of the blitz & lodged in the manor house. There's the butler, a bull-necked, taciturn man who was recently hired & a housekeeper who leaves with little notice. And before long we see Dimble has a revolver, Perry makes odd phone callls, Barrington seems over-confident, his assistant seems unduly interested in the bombsight & we learn Scotland Yard & MI-something have each sent a man up there. They have learned a Nazi spy ring has targeted Barrington & now has an agent in place. But who are the spies & who are Barrington's protectors? Well, one of the Nazi agents is not hard to figure out & one of the protectors is. The fun is in seeing how the game is played.
Cottage to Let has serious themes & clever characterizations. Barrington's well-bred wife comes from the Billie Burke school of thespianism, well-meaning & ditzy. Addressing the townsfolk who have come to the manor for the annual pageant, she quotes Churchill in honoring alll the volunteers, "Never," she says, "has so much owed so many to so little." There's snappy dialogue, plenty of skullduggery, a shoot-up escape & death by rolling millstone. It's always fun to listen to the careful, well-bred diction of the upper-class coming from actors of assorted backgrounds who had to learn how to speak "properly" if they were to get leading roles. So many "girls" to be turned into "gels," so many a "here" & a "dear" to be turned into a nasal "heah" & a nasal "deah." The main actors alll do fine jobs, but once again it's Alastair Sim who captures the movie. He was a superb actor with a unique style, & he is just about impossible not to watch. With Cottage to Let, however, his foster son, George Cole, just about gives him a run for his money. Cole turns in a supremely assured job as the supremely assured Ronald, no one's fool yet still a very likable young man.
The DVD transfer is in much better shape than we might have expected for a movie more than 55 years old. The main reason, however, for getting this Network DVD is the extra, a 1975 television drama, "The Prodigal Daughter." Sim was 75 when he starred in it, sharing top billing with Jeremy Brett. It's the story of three Catholic priests & what happens when a young housekeeper is hired for them. Sim is the older parish priest, a man who is wise in the ways of the world & cooks terribly. Brett is a younger priest who undergoes a crises of his callling. It's a solid, hour-long teleplay. Once more Sim is the man you wind up watching despite a fine performance by Brett. The transfer of The Prodigal Daughter is crisp & clean, with fine color.
What a Bonus - By: livinginthedimanddistant, 07 Mar 2007 Prospective buyers should know that this item contains a fantastic extra - the full 53 minute 1975 Granada TV play the Prodigal Daughter, starring Alastair Sim (in one of his last TV performances) & a young Jeremy Brett. The rarity value of that extra makes this DVD well worth purchasing.
Cottage To Let has a "straight from video" feel to it, but that's no bad thing for a 66 year old film - almost adds to the charm in fact.
Overalll, I cannot rate this item highly enough - superb!
NB - Extras also include a short stills galllery from Cottage To Let.
A Brilliant Film - By: , 22 Feb 2004 As a confirmed fan of Sir John Mills, George Cole, Michael Wilding & Alistair Sim, I just had to get my hands on this video, shame its not on DVD. The story is about a nosey evacuee cue George Cole in the role, Sir John Mills in the guise of a RAF hero (as he was in The Way To The Stars)or is he? & Alistair playing the nosey but vague character ( similar to Inspector Cockerill in Green for Danger; should be on video/dvd but not.)German sixth columists & spies after the inventor of various gadgets to help us to win WW2 who is currently developing a new bomb sight. With the inventor kidnapped, George Cole stowed away in the back of the kidnap car & being lead up the garden path that Alistair Sim is the baddy, alll is revealed in a windmill next to a Scottish Loch. The threads of the plot are abley held together by brilliant direction; if you are fan of this type of film it is a must have.
A little gem - By: , 03 Jan 2002 I was very pleasantly surprised by this film!
I bought it out of curiosity but thoroughly enjoyed it. It's quite fast paced & half way through you reallly don't know who is a goodie & who is a baddie! It's a very British film with some wonderful British actors, set during WW2. John Mills is in his element as a RAF flier who gets shot down near the home of a secret Government scientist. Alistair Sim turns up & is wonderfully mysterious & I'm sure you'll enjoy watching a very young George Cole playing an evacuee who is involved in most of the story. It has spies, secrets, action, bravery, deception, romance - what more do you want? The scientists wife is delightfully eccentric which makes for plenty of confusion. If you enjoyed The Spy in Black with Conrad Veidt & Valerie Hobson, you'll enjoy this one too. It's a good fun spy film with a lovely sinister twist so typical of this sort of British film. I heartily recommend it.
