Roy Boulting directs this 1950s British comedy starring Glynis Johns as a woman whose sympathy for those in need plays havoc with her love life. Though it may seem to outsiders that Josephine Luton (Johns) is a good match for her fiancé, businessman Alan Hartley (Donald Sinden), there is a major problem - Alan is doing too well to elicit her sympathy. This goes instead to his friend David Hewer (Peter Finch), a playwright whose lack of success thus far leaves him in a melancholy state of mind. Josephine duly begins a romantic relationship with David to try and cheer him up, but are there men in even more desperate straits that could steal her from him?

Al Viola's adaptation of Graham Billing's novel about how a man's outlook on life is changed by his harsh surroundings. Richard Forbush (John Hurt), a shallow man and philanderer, wants to win back the affections of his girlfriend Tara (Haley Mills) and decides that moving to the Antarctic to study the life-cycle of penguins is just the way to impress her. Whilst there he embarks on a solitary struggle of survival and having begun to deeply admire the penguins uses this knowledge to keep himself alive.