Rent Mine Own Executioner (1947)

Hard Times and Soft Sofas - Mine Own Executioner review by CH

The title Mine Own Executioner (1947) is from John Donne, and the rest of the film is scripted by Nigel Balchin from his novel which, like his The Small Back Room (filmed by Powell and Pressburger), was a successful part of the post-war literary landscape: both popular and critically acclaimed.

Quite possibly, psychiatry has never been as well depicted on screen as it is in this beautifully filmed work (the director is Anthony Kimmins, the cinematographer Wilkie Cooper). Here, in smart London premises, with an enviable curving staircase, an excellent Burgess Meredith is a psychotherapist with an ability to help young and old through the troubles they present to him – not though that he is able to smooth his own marital situation (his wife is Dulcie Gray). Nobly, he gives his time to those able to pay (some splendid cameos amidst those patients) and those who cannot do so.

Meredith is under further pressure as he is not a part of the profession itself but working at a tangent to it, a situation compounded by the arrival of the attractive Barbara White who asks help for her husband (Kieron Moore), whose behaviour has become erratic and dangerous after being taken a prisoner by the Japanese during the war.

All this takes many twists, with some noirish interiors, and owes much to Balchin who, in a varied career, had studied psychiatry. He understood the continual battle between elegant settings and tormented minds, what Gerard Manley Hopkins called those mental “cliffs of fall” - and anybody with even a hint of vertigo will cling to the arm of chair while watching some of it, even sliding forwards in terror.

Here is one of the best films ever made in England – and it should be better known. As should Balchin, a man whose own demons took him far too young.

Psychological thriller. - Mine Own Executioner review by Steve

Many thrillers after WWII hid the motives for a crime in the subconscious mind of a character. But this goes deeper. It is about psychologists who interpret the behaviour of their patients, or each other. Every gesture is a psychological tell. The film seeks to instruct about Freudian analysis and the value of non-medical psychotherapy.

Although this is fascinating, it does feel a bit phoney. Maybe even naive. However, the film stands up brilliantly as a work of suspense, and an offbeat film noir. Burgess Meredith plays a troubled analyst who is unable to kill his own demons, though he seeks to heal the minds of others. He takes the case of a violent former POW (Kieron Moore).

And we discover that our greatest danger comes from our repressed experiences. Which is especially problematic because these Brits shut down their emotions behind a rigid facade. But eventually, the therapist and his disturbed patient are clinging onto a precipice that is both real and symbolic in an extraordinarily exciting climax.

Anthony Kimmins is best known for George Formby vehicles. But, given a budget, a fine script by Nigel Balchin and decent actors, he directs a complex film of ideas which examines social issues, like the mental trauma of returning war veterans and the vogue for unlicensed psychoanalysts, smuggled into a darkly compelling thriller.