A Kid for Two Farthings (film)

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A Kid For Two Farthings
Cover of the film novelisation
Directed by	Carol Reed
Produced by	Carol Reed
Written by	Wolf Mankowitz
Starring	Celia Johnson Diana Dors David Kossoff Joe Robinson Jonathan Ashmore Brenda De Banzie Primo Carnera Lou Jacobi Irene Handl Danny Green Sydney Tafler Sid James
Music by	Benjamin Frankel
Cinematography	Edward Scaife
Editing by	A.S. Bates
Distributed by	London Films
Release date(s)	August 15, 1955 (UK)
Running time	96 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

A Kid For Two Farthings is a 1955 film, directed by Carol Reed. The screenplay was adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his own novel of the same name.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the busy wholesale-retail world of London's garment district. everyone, it seems, has unattainable dreams. Then a small boy - Joe - finds a unicorn, in fact a sickly little goat, with just one twisted horn in the middle of its forehead. This, he has been led to believe by a local tailor, Kandinsky, will bring everyone good fortune.

Critically, this was one of Carol Reed's least successful films, however the rich ensemble cast, and the interweaving of harsh reality and fantasy remains a potent mix. The character of Kandinsky in particular is seen to embody the plight of surviving European Jews ten years after the Second World War. His mythologizing about a race of unicorns with magic powers that were destroyed everywhere but may still exist in some far-off country, can be seen as analogous to the holocaust.

A Kid for Two Farthings was nominated for a Golden Palm in 1955 at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film has a haunting last image, of Kandinsky carrying a tiny body to the graveyard, whilst passing in the opposite direction is a Torah-reading Rabbi.