Purely Joyful Movie!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A Hitchcock type thriller without the élan we get from the master of suspense. Its post war foggy London and visiting playwright Philip Hannon (Van Johnson) is in a bitter mood. He is living in a luxurious suite by the Thames with a butler in his beck and call but when an ex fiancée (Vera Miles) visits him his mood is not lightened.Things tense up when he overhears a plot in a pub to kidnap a child but the police do not take him seriously, not helped that he lacks detail because he has become blind, something he has tried to hide, hence the bitterness.However with just Miles and the butler to help they try to track down the plotters but Hannon finds himself in danger.With sumptuous art direction and sets, Technicolour and Vera Miles in the cast you can see why the Hitchcock comparisons are made. Van Johnson may be no James Stewart but he brings a style although he does seem a bit wooden here and there.The finale does come across as rather absurd as our blind playwright puts himself in obvious peril but even with a capable director such as Henry Hathaway you can see that he lacks the touch to bring an extra dimension to this thriller.

In the immediately post-Rear Window world that was 1956, Henry Hathaway's 23 Paces to Baker Street arrives with the promise of murder and other varying versions of foulness being afoot that are either overheard or overseen by that of our gallant hero; his suspicions, amidst a sea of oppositional voices headed by that of those close to him, driving the thrills and spills of a film following our lead taking the basics of a case that he has to go on into a full blown uncovering of nastiness. In Hitchcock's wondrous chiller, the lead was denied his mobility in the form of a broken leg, although could observe anything he wanted and everything he felt he needed via that pair of handy binoculars he owned; the film rich in context in that way, used periodically around as a basis of educational starting points in regards to the notion of characters "looking" within the frame. In Hathaway's film, such an idea is subverted in the providing of us with a lead able to get around, although hindered by blindness; with it additionally going the Hitchcockian thrill of a character being able to see what he sees and being unable to act on it - replaced by someone thinking they've heard something and then getting caught up in a proverbial web once the physical getting out and undertaking of a misadventure kicks off. In short, it isn't as tense and it isn't as claustrophobic in that restricted way you felt Rear Window was, but we can work with it.That lead is Van Johnson's Phillip Hannon, an American playwright living in London basking in the success of some decent past plays already under his belt and in the process of finishing yet another. Only, he isn't; the man is cynical and often embittered, living alone bar with his faithful butler Bob (Parker) in an apartment which handily overlooks most of London's more easier iconography. Milling around is an ex-secretary whom doubles up as a former flame, that of Jean (Miles) whose implication that he knows him all too well occurs when she advises Bob on helping him in certain department. In being blind, Phil must dictate into a microphone his work by explaining the purer details on both the setting and character traits, before providing the folk with dialogues occurring therein; something that takes its toll on a current work which he's in constant means of writing and rewriting. When out one evening at a sparsely populated public house, the film's catalyst occurs; some silhouetted characters, one rather laughable in their shady complexion, mumbling to one another just the other side of a thin glass pane. We're not sure what it is about, but it sounds sordid enough to send our Phil into all sorts of discomfort when he paints images of kidnappings and chaos, the likes of which, according to the voices, are merely days away thus providing the film with a sense of urgency in that regard as the clock supposedly ticks down.Primarily, the film's chief source of ambiguity as to whether these people talking in this public house, of whom nobody else heard nor really saw, were engaging in the sorts of things Phil accuses them of, lies with whether or not we entrust Phil to be entirely 'with it'. As a man whom specialises in characters; high-drama and extravagantly fictitious scenarios, we question whether he is to be entirely trusted during a process of injecting these faceless shadows with personas and traits, one instance of text-reading ability seeing him deduce that the female shadow must have been a rich woman due to a scent prominent purely with expensive perfume.Indeed, Hathaway goes to certain lengths to create a portrait of the man as somebody a little fragile as he limps on with his work and thus, is perhaps not entirely believable. The instances are juxtaposed by that of the manner in which Phil describes with rue, but spectacularly accurately all-the-same, a scene on the river Thames as he shares a boat ride with some of his friends; his capturing of the boats and the buildings and the way the weather lies contributing to something which, despite being unable to see, alludes to an ability to configure fitting, accurate descriptions of what it is he senses in his presence. One of the reoccurring morsels of genius in Hitchcock's Rear Window was the ambiguity surrounding whether or not everything might have been in the lead's imagination, a sense of doubtfulness I didn't necessarily feel as aware of in 23 Paces to Baker Street as a film providing us with a lead; giving us this would-be sordid founding and then playing out its narrative in a fashion that didn't suggest it would lead anywhere else bar a denouement complete with a twist and a standard, building-blocks imbued finale.For the best part, the film has fun with its premise and provides us with some decent set pieces; Bob the butler going after a certain somebody through the hustle and bustle of a busy London shopping day one of them. Another instance, in which the decaying buildings born out of wartime shellings that are yet to be dealt with act as the setting, sees a quite frightening sequence in which someone needs only walk a few feet in the gloom of the evening to fall to their deaths. The film is peppered with the sounds of steamers and their fog-horns anonymously blaring through the often nightly set haze and rearing from the locale of the nearby river; the tooting of the tug boats usually accompanying them in what is a morbid internal soundtrack overlying proceedings and accentuating the sleaze and depravity rife within this London's underbelly. Hathaway has by no means directed a dud, and those supporting the lead do well in standing around acting estranged at Phil's accusations, but one could do an awful lot better if one is yet to be exposed to Hitchcock.

Philip Hannon is a blind playwright residing in London, during one of his R&R moments at the local public house, he overhears part of a conversation that suggests the vile kidnapping of a child. Getting the police force to take him seriously proves hard to achieve, so with the help of his trusty butler and his ex fiancée, Jean Lennox, he hopes to avert a dastardly crime. Well well well, sometimes you can tune into a film not expecting much more than a B movie rush, yet just occasionally you get submarined and get a mysterious treat that deserves far better support than it actually gets. I have been delighted to log on to this films page and see that others have been entertained by this picture as much as myself. This is not ground breaking or even remotely original, in fact it does play out as some sort of cheap knock off idea that Hitchcock turned down in his sleep, but you know what? Sometimes a film can be great just for having an honest will to entertain the viewers with suspense and mystery being its main fortitudes. Henry Hathaway directs and it's just another film to prove that as up and down as his career was, he was never afraid to tackle different genres, here, with the London location totally interesting, he manages to knit it all together with impressive results. Van Johnson has his critics, and it would be foolish of me to not concur that at times he has been wooden, but here as the blind Phillip Hannon, he shows that if given good enough roles he was more than able to rise to the challenge. Not one to revisit often for sure, but seriously recommended to those who like the genre and are stuck for a good film to watch. 7/10

Nigel Balchin was one of the finest English novelists of his generation and equally facile at screen writing and it was his name rather than that of veteran director Henry Hathaway and definitely not that of wooden actor Van Johnson that attracted me to this one. Once you get over the ridiculous mistakes which no one who doesn't live in or know London well will register - Johnson's address is given as Portman Square which is indeed close to Baker Street but the Thames is a good mile or more away and not, as depicted, right outside his apartment building - this is a classy little thriller if a tad familiar: Johnson, a playwright has recently lost his sight and overhears a conversation (shades of Sorry, Wrong Number) which he interprets as a plot to kidnap someone. From then on the film divides into two halves; 1) get someone to believe him/fake him seriously and 2)track down the perpetrators. It works on both levels even if Maurice Denham's policeman is a little too dim and a little too eager to let an 'amateur' have his head. Certainly worth seeing.