[Period of Adjustment] is a fine example of the schizophrenic cinema, teetering uneasily between cinema and television, the forerunner of a completely new genre perhaps (the tele-cinema?). It could just be that George Roy Hill has not shaken off his television influences, but this feature looks exactly as if he were trying to please two separate audiences—the cinema audience now, and the box watchers when at some future date the 1963 film catalogue is sold to the TV channels. It will, I think, look more at home on the small screen than it does on the large one. There have been a number of notable recruits from the television to the film studios but, on the available evidence, George Roy Hill isn't one of them.

The small-sized compositions cramped in the centre of the screen fit uneasily into the larger playing area; there is too much inter-cutting of...