The Wayward Bus

A cleaned up adaptation of a Steinbeck novel, this centres on Sweetheart, a boneshaker of a bus rattling over the 'washboard roads' of Southern California. On board are, among others, salesman Dailey, loud-mouthed but lonesome; Mansfield, a soiled stripper with an unsullied heart; mixed-up rich kid Michaels. During a journey beset by flood, landslide and a collapsing bridge, the characters' assorted predicaments get more or less ironed out. To compensate for excessive contrivance, the film is rough-edged and rather awkwardly composed for a 1957 Fox production - presumably the result of the project being assigned to an obscure French documentary maker.