JETTCO48
Just watched this on Talking Pictures. This channel are doing a great job in bringing us a wide range of "long missing from TV" movies, most of the time in excellent prints.Not sure what to say about this? I think Michael Redgrave is/was one of our greatest actors, but... everyone has there off days, and, in this movie, EVERYONE seems to be having an off day!Losey whips them all up into a frenzy of over acting, particularly Leo McKern & Alec McOwen, and things are not helped by the ridiculously over-wrought musical score, which at times drowns out the dialogue.By the end, I couldn't have cared less who did what to whom,and why,as I was losing the will to live!
loureedisacreep
Leo McKern's performance is way over the top, with steam coming out of his ears virtually every second he's on screen. It confounds me that the police don't suspect this totally unhinged man. What is supposed to be a dark drama is driven to the realm of high comedy by McKern's performance. I'm surprised he ever got an acting job again.And the viewer is also meant to believe that Redgrave's character - pathetic with a drunken demeanor - has convinced the other characters of his son's innocence? Yeah, right.The whole movie is driven by "there's something that's been overlooked", when the police should have found the key piece of evidence in the first place.The ending is just as ridiculous. It easily assumes that if a man kills another man he therefore must have been responsible for the earlier murder too. The phone call is made, the execution is halted - on this assumption.I guess kudos should be given for the movie's atmosphere, but there are too many holes and silly melodramatics.Ernest Clark (Loftus from TV's "Doctor In The House") has a cameo appearance.
MARIO GAUCI
Rather hysterical but engrossing and very well-acted melodrama (particularly by Michael Redgrave, a BAFTA nominee, and Leo McKern), ostensibly a murder mystery but with a manifest position against capital punishment.Interestingly, the culprit is known from the very beginning but, saddled with an alcoholic hero, one is never sure whether he'll be able to prove his son's innocence of murder; the denouement, then, is terrific - as unexpected as it is ironic. Losey's expressionist style (aided by Freddie Francis's chiaroscuro cinematography) is in full sway here: actually, according to film critic Gerard Legrand - writing in "The Movie" - this was the film were the director really came into his own; I can't vouch for that myself since I have yet to watch three important films he made earlier i.e. THE PROWLER (1951) and M (1951), both Hollywood productions, and THE SLEEPING TIGER (1954), Losey's first effort following his relocation to Britain.It's undeniably a powerful film though relatively verbose (it was adapted from a play by Emlyn Williams); like I said, Losey drives his actors to fever pitch and he has chosen a most capable cast - including Ann Todd, Alec McCowen, Peter Cushing, Renee' Houston, Lois Maxwell, Joan Plowright, Peter Copley and Richard Wordsworth! The only false note throughout, perhaps, is to be found in the score by Tristram Cary - which is so over-the-top that, at times, it even drowns out the dialogue!
freddy-11
A bizarre psychogram of a series of characters, all of whom are disturbed in their own manner. Losey delineates the characters through a series of images which are so effective because they're so simple.A cheap B-movie. The choppy dramaturgy and editing, viewed from today's perspective, conveys a nervousness and an intensity to the film that was probably lost on a 50's audience. No happy end, but a just and noble one.
AD
