Film Reviews by CH

The double – Dr. Jekyll, Dorian Gray – is a theme upon which many a variant has been made, along with growing conflicts between twin-born children (Elizabethan drama, eighteenth-century novels). The prolific director François Ozon turned to this with L' amant double (2017), adapted at some removes from a novel by the even more prolific Joyce Carol Oates.

Slickly filmed, in chic offices and apartments, the plot turns around Marine Vacth who, after a career as a model feels rootless, feels beset by childhood traumas and amatory dissatisfactions; these take her to a psychiatrist, Jérémie Renier; a passion springs up, which means he can no longer treat her, a situation compounded by their moving in together despite his lack of sympathy for her faithful cat, Milo.

So far, so much Eric Rohmer, you might think. Early on, in the opening moments, viewers have, though, been greeted by medical close-ups along a vagina which is lit to feel rather like a fairground ride. Mirrors are frequently broken; intimate moments are seemingly attended by others, including Renier's twin brother whom Marine Vacth has sought out as a replacement therapist.

This is certainly a new twist on transference.

Events long past certainly have a continuing effect on all this, for all concerned (not least Jacqueline Bisset, who has, naturally enough, two smaller rôles, effectively done).

Is all this worth one's time? Probably not, but Ozon is an accomplished, if variable director who supplies enough here to hold, if vex, the attention: there is interesting biology to be learned here from the nature of twindom, but, as it turns upon the screen, buy-one-get-one-free is not necessarily the best value for us.

Brightly lit, in colour or perhaps one should say color, and opening with a high-school bop, The Unguarded Moment (1956) might look at first to be, at most, a diversion. After all, its star – on screen for most of these ninety minutes – is Esther Williams. In fact, no water was injured in the making of this film, but pain is felt by many of those involved as events prove creepily at odds with this small-town setting.

After all, a woman's body has been taken away from a pavement after a murder one night. Another surprise is that all this is based upon a story co-written by Rosalind Russell.

Esther Williams is a music teacher who has received messages from an infatuated pupil, one whom a detective – George Nader (who appears to own one jacket) – believes could be that murderer. After all, the pupil (John Saxon) has been brought up by a man (Edward Andrews) who is more than embittered after his wife left him when their son was a few years old.

All of which, with a duplicitous school Head (Les Tremayne), could have been the stuff of a noir movie a decade earlier (not least a scene filmed from within a wardrobe). Director Harry Keller had by this time become better known for his work on television series. He had, though, made a film, lasting less than an hour, called Red River Shore. That title is now far better known as a song by Bob Dylan. Could Dylan, a great one for watching films and adapting their dialogue, have seen it one some late-night American channel?

As it is, with teacher-pupil relations the stuff of life and films the past sixty decades and more, it is well worth looking at this effective take upon that scenario – and the school's separating into brawling gangs was ahead of West Side Story.

What pleasure can there be in a criminal life? Any job which has been pulled off soon entails continuing uncertainty, as much from others involved as any pursuers. The task is not something about which one can speak, no chance of adding it to general conversation. It is a solitary pursuit born of social ineptitude.

These are but some of thoughts prompted by Bresson's Pickpocket (1959). Of course. to watch a film about criminals can be entertaining; they are a better on-screen presence than the saintly – doing bird rather than feeding them. The technique of lifting wallets from jackets and hiding them in a folded newspaper is as close as Pickpocket comes to any form of heist. Its interest is not so much in suspense as its attempt to enter a criminal mind – that of Martin LaSalle, who appears satisfied, however much he lifts, to eke out life in a scarcely-furnished bedsitter while, elsewhere in Paris, his mother is seriously ailing, not visited by anybody except her young neighbour, Marika Green.

Partly inspired by Dostoevsky, all this is redolent of that post-war French thought popularly deemed to consist of sitting in cafés and sporting a black, roll-top jumper.

There are some locations, including streets, a railway station and the glimpse of a race course, but much of the narrative haunts mundane premises in which those involved are more likely to be looking into the distance than at one another.

Made in black and white, the film turns around three main actors (including LaSalle's friend Pierre Leymarie) who were all new to acting, their seemingly gauche attitudes no accident but the result of Bresson's insisting upon dozen of takes: LaSalle had to toil up a curving staircase some forty times. This hour and a quarter is no B-feature. It has a studied air, one – as always with Bresson – which sets it apart from, say, the emergent nouvelle vague.

Symbolic of all this is the jacket – perhaps fashionably unlined - worn throughout by LaSalle, even when gaoled.

The edition of the film issued by Artificial Eye has an extra disc, much of which is a documentary with visits to those three actors for their reminiscences across almost half a century. No easy task, for one part of this involved a visit to somebody who had taken up a medical career; another who, via New York, now lives in a remote corner of Mexico City: twists and turns as fascinating as any in Pickpocket, and an aside which prompts one to seek out Bresson's book Notes on Cinematography, which is not, apparently, as dry as its title might suggest.

A brick viaduct, rain, a wandering cat, noisy pubs, backstage dressing rooms, scant furniture in tiny lodging-house rooms. This is the stuff of noir - and a great English use of these, and more, is Cavalcanti's They Made Me a Fugitive (1947). This Brazilian-born director has become better known in recent years for the films he made here, such as Went the Day Well?, although his French works are harder to find (there was once a National Film Theatre season). And now, such is the circle of death, it coincides with renewed interest in the novels of Jackson Budd, some of which have been reissued in the British Library's crime series.

One of these, yet to appear again, was adapted for the screen by Noel Langley for this film, and perhaps he hit upon the surreal turns which this seemingly gritty work takes. Here are many scenes with notices on doors, and framed sentiments on walls, including Auden's “It's Later than You Think”. All of which pale beside the opening scene which finds some functionaries who sigh and sweat as their overcoated shoulders bear a coffin into the, yes, Valhalla Undertakers; its rooftop surely defies all Planning laws, for upon it there are the huge, vertical letters R I P.

One does not give away much by saying that this coffin will cause many more deaths; it conceals contraband cigarettes; in a variant on those who carry violin cases, the top-hatted men are part of a gang headed by Griffith Jones who announces that the operation needs the added class which will be provided by an RAF veteran down on his luck after escaping from a Prisoner of War camp: Trevor Howard.

As with all gangs (and much of human society), factions emerge, partly fostered by rivalry for the women in their midst. Howard's end is precipitated by his balking at a coffinload of drugs. A stint in a misty West Country gaol only determines him to prove his innocence.

Everything – dialogue, pace, light and shade – coheres, including a scene in a house on the Moors which could be a film in itself. If one had to sum up the theme of this remarkable film in a phrase, it is that in this world and the next it is hard for all concerned to rest in peace.

The credits take some while to roll at the end of the new version of West Side Story, and one learns that many digital artists had been involved in its creation. This, though, has been not at all akin to dinosaurs who purport to traverse craggy mountains which, for all the technology, so often seems more risible than suspension of disbelief.

First filmed sixty years ago, that version remains in the mind as rather too clean-looking for a gritty tale of gang warfare. Steven Spielberg, with screenwriter Tony Kushner, has brought a darker hue to this tale of young love traversing racial boundaries, creating an almost-Shakespearean power for its ending. While, rest assured, never losing the brio of the music, lyrics and dance which made this a feat of collaboration by Bernstein, Sondheim and Robbins.

The time goes by swiftly (two hours and forty minutes, with the closing credits, which, happily, have orchestral variations upon the score). Nothing is out of step. The undubbed singing is excellent, and a great move was to have a cast unknown to most of us – except, of course, for Rita Moreno, who, at almost ninety, brings a subtly bravura turn to a rôle which, this time around, finds her running a bar where she dispenses beer and advice. It is not for me to reveal the surprise she springs.

Hoodlums and police alike are all brilliant turns, from Tony (Ansel Elgort) to Officer Krupke (Brian d'Arcy James), and a continually wistful Maria (Rachel Zegler): one could highlight everybody, but the the real point is that here is ensemble playing: nobody steals a march on the others.

It is exhilarating – and resonates over here, in a Britain riven by the street warfare that is Remain and Leave.

Meanwhile, do browse Sondheim's first huge volume of lyrics and commentary, Finishing the Hat. Here are lyrics dropped on the road, and a reminder that some of the unused music resurfaced at the beginning an equally engrossing work, the Chichester Psalms.

Directed by Tim Whelan, who was noted for Q Planes, Farewell Again (1937) is a variant upon that familiar form, the portmanteau film. In this case, with a screenplay by Clemence Dane and Ian Hay, there are gathered upon a ship a number of military men who are returning to England after service in India. Naturally, they look forward to shoreside reunions; equally so, there are problems along the way, such as new, intervening romances, severe illness, lax discipline.

All of this, with additional direction by Pen Tennyson, who was to die in the war, moves at a clip, sped by an adroit cast which includes Robert Newton and ever-distinctive Flora Robson. Much of it takes place inside, with the cinematography of James Wong Howe who always brought such artistry to his use of lamps and lenses that place becomes as much a character as any human within it.

It is also notable for its depiction of crowd scenes, all those gathered to greet a ship which in fact will only be in the quay for six hours before, on sudden Foreign Office orders, all have to return to duty somewhere abroad.

Made under the shadow of war, it is suffused with a need to do the right thing but never succumbs to tub-thumping ; here is something of the spirit which Noel Coward brought to his depictions of life at all levels of society.

Popular in its era, the film appears to be little known now but is well worth eighty minutes of one's time.

Ecology concerns apart, is there any more disagreeable a form of travel than by airplane? The thought comes to mind when when watching again Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). This takes place upon the ground, in the large bedroom of a Bremen flat, one of its walls adorned by a huge, bare-fleshed classical mural. Fassbinder, perhaps inspired by the claustrophobia of an aircraft cabin, wrote this play between one side of the Atlantic and the other, and soon turned it into a film.

This makes Coward's writing Private Lives one weekend in a Far-East hotel appear tardy. Both men were prolific, and some of their work can be easily overlooked. How well is this film known five decades on? The two-hour traffic of its stage can bring to mind the threesome which Coward depicted in Design for Living.

The eponymous rôle is taken by Margit Cartensen. Much given to lolling upon her big brass bed, this fashion designer continually issues instructions to her forever-silent assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann), which makes one speculate about everything which underlies their relationship in these curiously-appointed premises (Fassbinder and his time make such tremendous use of colour and camera angles that it never stales into a filmed play).

Before long, a puzzling situation is complicated. There appears on the scene Hanna Schygulla as Karin, who - as is Petra - proves to be separated from a man. They fall for each other, or so it seems. One of the film's well-nigh invisible act-breaks shows that they have remained together some while, presumably watched all that time by the mute Marlene.

It is another taunting relationship, one which provokes Karin to say that – true or not - her overnight absence was owing to the arrival elsewhere of a well-hung black man. Talk, throughout, is not so much dialogue as the declamations of a power struggle, all of which is inflamed by the arrival of Petra's equally vociferous daughter and mother.

Everybody is wary of one another, trust is elusive as the room appears to darken, while The Walker Brothers and The Platters rise on the soundtrack. One can well imagine that Scott Walker would have relished the angst of all this if he saw it (and perhaps he did so). What remains of us is hate.

To watch this on a cinema screen is to experience that Bremen room as a life-size reflection of the auditorium; oddly enough, at home that effect is lost upon a flatscreen, but the drama is more than sufficient to make one crave to fill one's gaps in viewings of Fassbinder's other work (Hitchcock-fashion, he appears here in a newspaper photograph passed between this otherwise all-female cast).

For those who have not seen it, make time for the dozen hours of his version of Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.

With such a title as French Dressing, being made in 1963 and set in, er, Gormleigh-on-Sea, one might reasonably assume that this would be a low-grade British farce.

It has, thankfully, elements of that, but these are transformed by its being the first feature film directed by Ken Russell, its script tweeted by Johnny Speight (as that verb used to mean) and sporting an array of character actors.

Here, for one, is James Bolam who works as a deckchair attendant smitten with local reporter Alita Naughton (who should have appeared on screen more often). He hits on the idea of bringing new vim to bathchair-ridden (as it were) Gormleigh by staging a film festival in which place of honour will be given to a Bardot lookalike (Marissa Mell).

All of which meets with the opposition of the Mayor (Bryan Pringle) who continually sports a top hat while his civic dignity crumbles as he duly welcomes the bombshell to his shores (Herne Bay does sterling service throughout, not least its seemingly endless pier), where the rain machine must have added considerably to the budget.

To this Russell brings a relish not only of whimsical Tati but all manner of New Wave tropes, such as speeded-up sections, an array of bicycle rides – and even a score provided by the composer favoured by Truffaut: Georges Delarue. And there is even a touch of Bunuel when, at the eventual festival: in front of the screen outraged, rampaging viewers are sucked into Miss Mill's close-up lips. And at the very moment when, backstage, Hitchcock-fashion, a champagne bottle explodes as she asks the Mayor what is on his mind.

And if this is not surreal enough, the turbulent festival is chronicled by a television reporter: a wonderfully droll cameo by eternal quizmaster Robert Robinson.

This being Ken Russell, there is even nudity - at the opening of a beach, a decade before Brighton did so, Miss Naughton's bottom proves as sporting as those of Mayor's office staff.

A final twist. Ken Russell turned down the offer of Cliff's Summer Holiday to make this – and the credits show that, none the less, one of the Shadows, Brian Bennett, was prevailed upon to add a foot-tappin' instrumental to it.

Here is something which anticipates A Hard Day's Night and Monty Python.

The higher frippery rarely reaches such levels. One to watch again.

How does one judge the success of a film? Mention Hester Street (1975) now and, chances are, it will not bring widespread recognition. In fact, it was made – by Joan Micklin Silver from Abraham Cahan's novella - for a modest cost which was recouped many times over. Many others' work should be so lucky. Filmed in black and white, it almost appears to have been made at the very time it depicts: the 1890s Lower East Side, a haunt of those immigrants from Eastern Europe, many Jewish, who had put pogroms behind them to seek a new life.

This was no simple matter. Steven Keats, as an immigrant a few years earlier, has adapted to American life under a new name, found work in the sewing district, and, as such, sent for his wife (Carol Kane) and young son (Paul Freedman) to join him in a modest boarding house.

He has been for dancing lessons, and, one infers, enjoyed dalliances, all of which is a shock to his wife who is an adherent of Jewish traditions, such as a need for wigs to obscure hair, and, failing that, a hat at all times. Here is a film of fraught interiors (along with some well-realised street scenes), many of which take place upon staircases between these modest apartments (which, in the twenty-first century, command a fortune).

For all that, there is a comedy to these dilemmas, not least in the surreal sequence which depicts in some detail the long-bearded deliberations which comprise a Jewish divorce (after which the husband is free to re-marry immediately while his ex-wife has to wait ninety-two days).

Awards ceremonies are not usually something to be mentioned in film reviews, but Carol Kane was up against Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. No need to remind you who won, and all praise to her – but it could have been shared with Carol Kane, who brought as wonderfully a stoney face to her rôle.

A week is ninety minutes in politics. The thought comes to mind when thinking of Wilfred Fienburgh MP. What course would his life have taken? On the left of the Labour Party, he rose through adversity and world war but died in 1958 when his motor-car hit a lamp-post in London. He left behind a novel, No Love for Johnnie. That posthumous publication was soon followed by a swift-moving film (1960) - and one can reasonably speculate that these inspired all the incarnations of Michael Dobbs's House of Cards.

Not to give away too much (writing and politics share something with the bridge or, better, the chess table). Although, in reality, that was the era of Macmillan's “you've never had it so good”, the film (directed by Ralph Thomas and co-written by Mordecai Richler) finds an alternative reality in which Labour is in charge between that end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. The focus is upon an MP from the North (Peter Finch, on screen almost all of the time). He has to temper what one might call his New Labour ambitions with his constituents' (or, at any rate, the local Party's) views - which are, shall we say, of a Corbynite persuasion.

Nothing changes, all that much. Even as I write this, there are doubtless voices which hush on the Terrace as somebody goes by who is not part of an intra-Party plot being hatched beside that eternal river.

And, of course, there is always the human factor to undermine the design of politics by numbers. In this case, Finch's marriage has staled, if it ever had brio; he is bruised, vulnerable to passing fancy (played both by the wonderfully-named Mary Peach, still with us, and Billie Whitelaw who, alas, is not). All of which appears to anticipate those events which, a couple of years later, brought down a Conservative government (“well, he would say that, wouldn't he?”).

As for this film itself, it moves at a pace, with a cast which comprises so many of those whom politicians would call “a dream team” - from Mervyn Johns to Mona

Washbourne by way of Dennis Price as an acerbic, low-camp photographer who, wise to model Miss Peach's ad hoc political involvement, tells her to pretend that the saucepan handle in her grasp “is the whole Front Bench”. How did that get past the Censor?

Here is a film whose ensemble playing is something of which politicians themselves can only dream. Although Peter Finch is to the fore with a bravura performance – which makes something charming of the charmless -, this is a film in which everybody, from a stationmaster to a Commons clerk, has a well-deployed line or two. Democracy in action.

Not to mention a party in a basement flat, that disc-driven staple of early-Sixties films. In this case, a few seconds find Oliver Reed contending with a cardboard box over his head. Quite why is not clear. Could he have inspired Lord Buckethead?

Another puzzle is that it was filmed in cinemascope, for the bulk of it – from bed to bar and back again – is a matter of smoke-filled interiors. Still, the eyes adjust to the shehanigans.

High time the novel were re-issued.

And would that there had been seat-belts and air-bags in 1958.

How well is René Clair's mid-Thirties film The Ghost Goes West now known?

In order to make it, Clair himself went northwards, as well as westwards, from France to direct this Anglo-American production. It opens in eighteenth-century Scotland where a feud between two Clans duly reverberates in a (then) present day which finds the descendant (Robert Donat) hard pressed to maintain a castle which survived a family honour lost upon the battlefield all those decades ago.

This might sound a working definition of hokum. Far from it. Of course, it is preposterous, and all the more so when an American millionaire is prevailed upon by his charming daughter to buy the castle (and attendant ghost) in order to pay off the chorus of debts which Donat has entailed upon it.

Little do those Scotsmen realise that their paying off will necessitate the transporting of the castle brick by brick across the Atlantic – and, as for what happens after, it is not the place of this piece to say any more.

Except that the enjoyment to be had from all this was highlighted at the time by Graham Greene (a film reviewer who was not easily pleased).

Did he but know it, Greene's review (with its cogent echoes of Elsinore) anticipated Ealing. “I have never believed more firmly in Clair's genius than I did during this film. The silly story, the gross misuse of Clair's peculiar qualities, were forgotten in my admiration for his camera sense. In no other film this year has there been the same feeling of mobility, of visual freedom. And the actors responded with unforced lightheartedness.”

In our digital age, the flickerings which are the stuff of the ghost's arrival and departure might seem small beer (perhaps one should say whisky, a commodity which finds a natural place in the narrative); and yet these draw one into – yes – what amounts to a transatlantic take upon that endlessly re-weavable plot which is Romeo and Juliet, here given a tartan hue.

It is 1937, and while strolling along the cliffs of the English coast brother and sister Ray Milland (he a composer) Ruth Hussey become enchanted by a large empty house into which their dog has chased a squirrel.

From such a small event (momentous if you are the squirrel) springs a tale which transcends time and space as a ghost brings tidings from two decades earlier.

All of which is a far cry from Milland's bravura spirit when first moving in. He thinks twice about sliding down the curving banister - “I don't want to damage the landing gear.” A new phrase on me. And, indeed, the film suggests a Lesbian relationship between a teacher and the dead woman whose portrait hangs on her wall.

When reviewing the film on its 1944 release, James Agee said that it transformed a mediocre story (the screenplay from an obscure novel was co-written by Dodie Smith, whose way with dogs is of course well known). “Ot seems to me harder to get a fright than a laugh, and I experienced thirty-five first-class jolts, not to mention a well-calculated texture of minor frissons.”

That electrical rate might not be as high eighty years on but – more mystery than Gothic – it has an atmosphere of civilised malevolence, not least the performances by Donald Crisp who forbids his grand-daughter Stella (the tragic Gail Russell) to visit the house, and Cornelis Otis Skinner as that teacher, her facial movements a masterclass in seething contempt.

And if this were not enough, there is Victor Young's theme music for the grand-daughter, which, a few years later, would have Ned Washington's words added to create “Stella by Starlight” - and, simultaneously, staying with the music alone for numerous versions by such jazz artists as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

How does one depict writing on the screen. At several points in Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool (2003) a crime novelist (Charlotte Rampling) reaches for her laptop to add to the word count of the latest case for her Inspector. This can hardly be something to engross the viewer; in fact, it provides a space in which to ponder everything that we have seen happen around her.

On the face of it, this is not much. Weary of her series, she has been persuaded by her publisher (Charles Dance) to retreat to his poolside villa in the Luberon and let inspiration flow. As is the way of sunny idylls, there is an incursion.

Crashing through the door one day is Ludivine Sangier, the wild and beautiful daughter of Dance by a dead lover, neither of whom was known to Charlotte Rampling (something which upsets her notion that in life one should have a novelist's omniscience). Ludivine lives for drink and men; there seems to be as many of the later as there are bottles; flesh and glass alike are thrown out when used up.

All this disturbs a writer's peace – and provides a variant upon the Inspector's increasingly routine investigations.

Beautifully made, in and out of the water, the film does not shy from lingering, and takes on a dreamlike quality. As the minutes go by, one wonders what is really happening to all these people. Are they a part of life itself or the imagination? And, for all of us, do these overlap?

See it on one's own with pleasure; and with others, it brings debate that could see off another bottle or more. And express surprise that Charlotte Rampling writes directly upon the screen.

Exactly what makes a film a screwball cannot be precisely defined. Certainly these are rooted in misunderstanding and mayhem, but, then, nobody calls the Marx Brothers' work screwball. At two hours, You Can't Take It With You is longer than most, and it starts slowly. Put simply, there are two households, one presided over by financier Edward Arnold and the other a bunch of madcap inventors indulged by Lionel Barrymore who has long since thrown in capitalism and taken his winnings so that he can enjoy life itself – in a prime piece of real estate upon which Arnold has his eye as a crucial part of a complex deal. As in the board game Monopoly, one can only build hotels when one has all of that colour group of properties.

To all this there is a Romeo and Juliet element, for Barrymore's daughter (the ever-delightful Jean Arthur) works in the Barrymore building and has fallen in love with his son (James Stewart). All this sprang from one of the Broadway successes by Moss Hart and George Kaufman, augmented in some ways for the film by Robert Riskin – and seen through the eyes of director Frank Capra. He has often been deemed sentimental. Among those to do so was Graham Greene, who began his contemporary article about it with “as for the reviewer, he can only raise his hands in a kind of despair” and appears to deem it a variant upon A Christmas Carol. Two paragraphs on, Greene takes an about-turn. “It sounds awful, but it isn't as awful as all that, for Capra has a touch of genius with a camera: his screen always seems twice as big as other people's, and he cuts as brilliantly as Eisenstein (the climax when the big bad magnate takes up his harmonica is so exhilarating in its movement that you forget its absurdity). Humour and not wit is his line, a humour which shades off into whimsicality. We may groan and blush as he cuts his way remorselessly through all finer values to the fallible human heart, but infallibly he makes his appeal – to that great soft organ with its unreliable goodness and easy melancholy and baseless optimism. The cinema, a popular craft, can hardly be expected to do more.”

In many ways, the film is a series of vignettes, such as the night-time walk through a park by James Stewart and Jean Arthur who are treated to an ad hoc musical dance routine by a group of children who leave a mark upon her which becomes evident when Stewart takes her, in the very next scene, to meet his parents in a smart restaurant. If the film turns upon such contrary encounters, it does not stale, one feels for all those involved as much as one is entertained be their continual mishaps, not the least of which is a huge explosion and its concomitant, a crowded police-station cell. Capra was of course a master of the crowd scene in all its forms (already seen, for example, in Lost Horizon, as it would be in It's a Wonderful Life).

Here, eighty years on, is a very good time – and it brings to mind that Punch cartoon in which a solicitor at a desk reads from the will to the assembled company: “he says that he has taken it with him.”

Such was late-Forties Soho when greengrocers favoured as elaborate a sign as that. It is glimpsed towards the end of Dancing with Crime (1947). Set by night throughout, here is opportunity for many a neon-light commentary upon events as they unfurl

in spiv-laden territory. One can never forget the moment, when, chased by bullets, the associate of a Mr. Big collapses in an alley at the end of which, across the road, flashes the title of a musical: SPREAD A LITTLE HAPPINESS.

Directed by John Paddy Carstairs from a Brock Williams screenplay, the story is a broad-brush one but sports many such details. Former soldier Richard Attenborough is now a taxi driver and engaged to Shelia Sim (off screen, they had recently married) who hankers for a stage career but, like so many, has to settle for what she can get in these austerity years. As chance has it, such is the taxi life, he encounters an Army friend who seems to be living well on nothing a year (as that memorable Thackeray chapter title once had it). Of course the Army man is mixed up with the black market whose front, naturally, is a night club with rather a good jazz orchestra

whose work is the background to many “ladies, excuse me” dance.

These ladies know what is good, if potentially dangerous, for them. As one of them remarks, “Men! They all want to take you to Brighton. What's so special about Brighton?” Unlike his subsequent appearance in Brighton Rock, Attenborough is here on the right side of the Law, if maverick in the way that he and Shelia Sim set about enacting revenge upon a Mr. Big given to such lines as “don't get too close – I'm fastidious.” What's more, he tells those he does not trust that they deserve a rest on his farm; needless to say, they meet a sorry end before reaching any such pastoral tranquility.

Here, again, we see how much a film gains by ensemble playing. Nobody is expected to “carry” it. A bartender can be as crucial in a few seconds as anybody else. And space must be found to mention Judy Kelly, who plays a nightclub singer on the slide (the lyrics were written by somebody with the unlikely-but-true surname of Purcell). A shame that she made only one more film after this.

With so much in these eighty minutes, one has to watch it again before long – and keep an eye out for more of those signs.