Despite being conceived of as a "play for voices" Dylan Thomas' marvellously poetic words still come across wonderfully in this whimsical adaptation of his famous tone poem. The rich language is to the fore as the film spends a day in the small Welsh fishing village of "Llareggub" (read it backwards) where a host of characters move in and out of focus: the blind Captain Tom Cat (Peter O'Toole) transfixed in a dream of his lost love, the beautiful prostitute Rosie Probert (Elizabeth Taylor); Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard (Sian Phillips) still abusing her two dead husbands; the wistfully innocent Myfanwy Price (Glynis Johns) and floating above it all, Richard Burton's fabulous pronunciation and poetic cadences as First Voice. Although Dylan Thomas' words and superb language construction will always work best as a spoken word piece, director Andrew Sinclair still manages an excellent stab at bringing the whole thing to wonderful, vibrant and eccentric cinematic life. ( )