The Wild and the Willing (also known as Young and Willing) is a 1962 British romantic drama film, directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Virginia Maskell, Paul Rogers, Ian McShane and Samantha Eggar.

[4] It was written by Nicholas Phipps and Mordecai Richler based on the 1960 play The Tinker by Laurence Doble and Robert Sloman.

[10] Betty Box said the film "didn't break records or win awards but it did reasonably good business and put the youngsters on the first rung of the ladder to stardom.

"[11] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "One doesn't doubt the film's good intentions: the seeking out of a promising location, with Lincoln standing in for redbrick provincialism; the use of an eager and largely untried team of young actors (among whom John Hurt and Samantha Eggar show the most promise); the resolute excursions into the 'X' certificate dialogue, pub scenes and bedroom scenes which have helped to equate this kind of realism with box-office.

But the film, from Virginia Maskell's frustrated don's wife, swigging whisky out of the bottle and seducing her husband's students in the kitchen, to the extravagantly self-conscious heartiness of the roistering in pubs, looks either slightly off-key or hilariously so.

Harry may have seemed a plausible character in the original play; here he becomes a walking compendium of jaded Angry Young Man attitudes, while the film leans so far backwards in its determination to integrate Reggie, the coloured student, into the group that it achieves a kind of desperate self-consciousness about him.

"[12] In the Radio Times, David McGillivray wrote, "an unsuccessful play, The Tinker – written when Angry Young Men were in vogue – is the source of this exposé of British student life.

Once shocking, it has aged as badly as others of its ilk, but now has considerable curiosity value, not least because of early appearances by Ian McShane, Samantha Eggar, John Hurt and others.

"[14] Sky Movies concluded the film "still manages to generate moments of high excitement – none more so than a climatic climb up the sheer side of a crumbling steeple – a few minutes that are guaranteed to have you on the edge of your chair.