James Hill

Accompanying an oil exploration team around the world on its unsuccessful quest, Hill later wrote of his trek in the trade magazine Film User that he had " travelled nearly 100,000 miles by car, jeep, train, liner, launch, dhow, canoe, catamaran, bicycle, aircraft, flying-boat, camel, helicopter, horseback and foot." Due to production costs and almost inaccessible locations the movie was shot on 16mm film, rather than 35mm film then in common use.<br /><br /> In the 1960s Hill expanded his scope and firmly established himself as a mainstream director. In the words of Richard Chatten of The Independent: "The British cinema of the Sixties was littered with the bones of directors who showed promise in the field of documentaries and shorts but came to grief in features; but James Hill was one of the most conspicuous exceptions."<br /><br /> Beginning with The Kitchen (1961), based on Arnold Wesker's play, it was quickly followed by two John Mortimer play adaptations, Lunch Hour (1961), showing the dire consequences of a lunch hour romance, and the legal satire The Dock Brief (1962); both essentially two-hander plays. Every Day's a Holiday (1964), for which he also wrote the screenplay, was a teenage pop musical typical of the era. Read Less