A terrific cast of dependable British faces can do little to bring much charm to this lightweight fantasy, listlessly directed by Michael Barry. It takes its fantastical McGuffin and mercilessly runs it into the ground far too early, expending any potential and leaving us with just a fitfully amusing, though never exactly laugh out loud funny, romantic comedy. It was one of four films to make use of production designer’s David Rawnsley’s “independent frame” system which made extensive – though seldom obvious – use of back projection to cut down on costly location filming (the others were Warning to Wantons (1949), Floodtide (1949) and Poet’s Pub (1949). It ultimately proved to be even more costly than going out on to the streets of London and was quietly retired, though in more recent years whole films have been made using green screens, virtual sets and hardly any real world shooting.

Roy Fairfax (Nigel Buchanan), a junior partner in London based watch and clock manufacturers Fairfax & Sons, arrives in the village of Slipfold to visit his fiancée Jennifer Peters (Sally Ann Hows) and ask her dentist uncle Arthur (James Robertson Justice) for permission to marry. But he’s unaware that Jennifer is the latest in the Peters female line to inherit a strange ability – she can stop any kind of machinery after fifteen minutes of being around them, an ability even she doesn’t yet realise that she has. On a train ride to London, Jennifer meets journalist Jock Melville (Gordon Jackson) who falls in love with her and the next morning, having made a difficult trip to town after every method of transport Jennifer uses breaks down, Arthur and his Aunt Mab (Joyce Barbour) are worried and searching for her. Romantic complications ensue, Jennifer continues to cause mechanical failures wherever she goes and it all culminates with Jock and the rest of the staff of the Evening Comet issuing Jennifer a challenge – to prove she has the abilities that she’s now aware of by stopping their printing presses.

The cast (which also includes Sonia Holm, Richard Vernon, Arthur Lowe, William Mervyn, an uncredited Sam Kydd, an early screen appearance by Kenneth More as a London copper and the comedy duo of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as “The Mechanical Types”, five pairs of men involved with the equipment that Jennifer causes to fail) are far and away the best reason to watch the film. Otherwise, it’s a disappointingly flat comedy that promises more than it can possibly deliver. It strives to be of a screwball comedy but needed to be a lot more madcap than it is – British comedy was often too restrained to make for successful screwball and the result is a film that, judging by the contemporary reviews, wasn’t particularly funny even in 1949.

Jennifer’s “gift” is merely a gimmick and one that wears thin very quickly. T.J. Morrison’s script – based on a story he co-wrote with Basil Thomas – at least sets up the premise neatly enough. The fact that Jennifer lives in a bucolic village, dubbed “Sleepy Slipfold” in an opening caption, is established as vital to the plot – even in 1949 it was possible to live in rural Britain and not to be exposed to too many mechanical devices, ensuring that Jennifer remains blissfully unaware (beyond an inability to wear watches) of her powers. But after the smart set-up, the psychic ability – never explained – simple wanders in and out of the plot as and hen the romance needs a little nudge in the right direction. To make matters worse, it ends with a ridiculous “love keeps the wheels turning” ending in which we learn that true love negates whatever the mystery power might be.

It’s very obvious, not particularly funny and makes little use of its core idea so it’s no great surprise that it’s skipped into a sort of obscurity. It barely gets a mention these days let alone a television airing and any kind of reappraisal and rediscovery today seems extremely unlikely. It’s not an awful film, just a very bland and eminently forgettable one. Morrison seems to think that the machinery killing powers are joke enough and forgets to write enough gags to adequately fill out even the relatively brief 78 minutes, leaving a talented and attractive cast struggling for things to do to keep it all afloat.