Rent The Long Dark Hall (1951)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- When Arthur Groome (Rex Harrison) finds his girlfriend murdered at her Earls Court flat he is stricken with grief and fear. When the police question him about the crime, Arthur, a married man, denies all knowledge of the girl. Soon, however, he finds himself charged with murder - and inexorably drawn towards the gallows...
- Actors:
- Rex Harrison, Lilli Palmer, Tania Heald, Henrietta Barry, Dora Sevening, Ronald Simpson, Raymond Huntley, William Squire, Ballard Berkeley, Anthony Dawson, Denis O'Dea, Anthony Bushell, Henry B. Longhurst, Patricia Cutts, Meriel Forbes, Brenda De Banzie, Douglas Jefferies, Fletcher Lightfoot, Anthony Shaw, Michael Medwin
- Directors:
- Reginald Beck, Anthony Bushell
- Producers:
- Anthony Bushell, Huntington Hartford, Peter Cusick
- Writers:
- Nunnally Johnson, W.E. Fairchild, Edgar Lustgarten
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Thrillers
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- Not available for rental
- Run Time:
- 88 minutes
- Languages:
- English
- Subtitles:
- None
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.37:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
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Reviews (1) of The Long Dark Hall
Lust and a Garter - The Long Dark Hall review by CH
If The Long Dark Hall (1951) is by no means a great film, it is very well made. As its jury will do, consider the evidence.
Written by the excellent Nunnally Johnson, it sprang from a novel by Edgar Lustgarten, well known in his time, and co-directed by Anthony Bushell (who also appears as a lawyer).
All are wonderfully supported by cinematographer Wilkie Cooper who, with an effective score by Benjamin Frankel, brings a noir tone to every setting, whether it be a bar, a lodging house or suburban Richmond. Curiously, Manny Farber said that it was a “dillie... shot without electric lights in a dark walnut courtroom”. What a dillie might be in this context is uncertain, but that oppressive courtroom is as well depicted as the rest of the film.
What has led to that scene in which white wigs stand out against dark walnut?
Here are familiar notions. A married man (Rex Harrison) has fallen for a West End showgirl (Patricia Cutts) and so wants to help her that he is more than tetchy at the thought of her “seeing” any other man. And there is his downfall. He lets himself in at her lodging house, to which she has given him a key against the orders of forthright landlady (Brenda de Banzie) who is one in a long line of those who tell the police (including Raymond Huntley), “I keep a respectable house”.
Harrison finds the girlfriend dead – and panics, a moment's mis-judgment which brings all his woe. To relay all this here is not to give anything away, for these few minutes have seen the killing itself, by a brilliantly creepy Anthony Dawson, who will re-appear to taunt Harrison's wife (so well played by Lilli Palmer, calm incarnate) just as he did his first victim, none other than Jill Bennett.
And it all has a tinge of metafiction. Now and then the narrative cuts to a room in which a detective tells a novelist about the case, and teases him to suggest its subsequent turns.
If this makes it sound as though there are several films unreeling beside one another, that is a fair point, M'Lud – but any jury has to bring in a verdict of... quality.