It really is a brilliant film, with an authentic 70s strangeness, manifesting itself partly in an eerily deliberate slowness of pacing, to which it takes time to grow accustomed, but which is part of the stupendous atmosphere it accumulates, and partly in its robustly English sense of place. Sarah Miles is superb as Lady Franklin, the damaged young aristocrat who has had a nervous breakdown as a result of being widowed.

For some reason, she takes a shine to her new chauffeur, Ledbetter, played by Robert Shaw, and her depression lifts - and the acting technique with which Miles demonstrates the thawing of her mood, and her change of personality, is a marvel.

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As for Robert Shaw, he is an icon of 70s Hollywood from The Sting and Jaws, but this is his finest hour. He is the bluff, but amiable driver with a weird habit of addressing his passenger as "m'lady", like Parker with Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds.

He sees how his employer is yearning for compassion and love, and instinctively senses that he can gain friendship and intimacy with her through evasions, fantasies and lies of his own invention. Ledbetter poignantly becomes irreversibly entranced with her at the very moment when she gains the emotional strength to do without his ministrations; he falls in love as she outgrows him.

Lady Franklin finds herself being romanced by Captain Hugh Cantrip, an ambitious young Liberal politician, nicely played by Peter Egan, who was an old associate of her late husband's and, crucially, Ledbetter's commanding officer during the great war.

When poor Ledbetter - very much other ranks - finally plucks up the courage to confess his love to her it is exquisitely painful and embarrassing. And just as Ledbetter had been able to give Lady Franklin the healing touch and emotional nourishment that none of her social equals could provide, he knows something that has eluded her intimate circle: that Captain Cantrip is a cad who is using her and her late husband's network of political contacts to advance his own parliamentary ambitions.

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This slow-burning tale is marked by intriguing sequences: long, uninterrupted car rides as Miles gazes out of the window like a wounded animal or a sick child being genially coaxed back into health by Ledbetter. There are tremendously achieved set pieces, such as the excruciating luncheon Lady Franklin hosts for local bigwigs to launch Cantrip's political career, or the boys' boxing tournament for which the besotted Ledbetter has asked Lady Franklin to present the winners' cup - and at which he finds himself horribly upstaged by his old CO.

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It is a gem of a film, a tragicomedy of obsolete English manners and a poignant story of failure in love. At Cannes a few years ago, journalists were given a sort of souvenir bag for the festival's 60th anniversary, with the names of the festival's great film-makers on it: and there, along with Scorsese, Fellini and all the rest was Alan Bridges's name. Should we leave it to Cannes to remind us what a great talent Bridges is? How about a retrospective for Alan Bridges at the BFI Southbank?