Seven Sinners
August. 15,1936Ed Harwood, a wisecracking private investigator from New York, discovers a crime at an hotel in Nice during a carnival. The unraveling of the mystery which lies behind will lead him and Caryl Fenton, a female insurance agent, who will become his companion, first to Paris, then to London, later through the English countryside and finally to Southampton, in search of a criminal train wrecker.
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Reviews
Wonderful character development!
hyped garbage
Brilliant and touching
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
A cool British thriller with Edmund Lowe and Constance Cummings, with an eventful storyline and a thoughtful plot, written by Gilliatt; the idea belongs to the pulp tropes, and in fact to the 19th-early 20th century popular fiction, with sinister secret associations and conspiracies, but the identity of the major villain, though obvious, is nonetheless surprising, anyway highly unusual. There are many piquant one-liners, and a sense of the quaint, well conveyed by a few striking physiognomies, foreboded by the opening scenes at the carnival in Southern France, with the mask . The leads' performances are very generic, which matches the script (where these characters aren't endowed with exceptional insight, but with wit and dynamism, the leads are keen on clues, but not on moral insight, and the gullible and unsuspecting New York detective tips the villain and provides him with the necessary information), as well as the movie's focus on the villains for the suspense and chills.It has a fantastic, dreamlike feel, feverish; Thomy Bourdelle is a villain as obvious but also as effective, as Mowbray in 'Terror by Night'. It's a reminder of how British were Hitchcock's '30s movies.Those who already like the '30s British cinema don't need any further recommendations. Therefore, I would recommend the British 'Seven Sinners' to both Hitchcock's fans, and 'Fantômas'' fans.
Edmund Lowe was not an especially handsome man, but he had a nice, carefree acting style that I have always found endearing. Because of this, even a relatively routine film like "Doomed Cargo" is well worth watching. In this film, Lowe is ably assisted by Constance Cummings--another American actor--though she later specialized in making British films and moved to the UK for good.The movie begins in an odd way--Lowe is dressed as a devil for a party and his tail is shut in a door--and he cannot move. But that's not the only thing weird about this party, as Lowe finds a dead man--and no one believes him because when they return the corpse is gone. But, to make things even weirder, after a train wreck, Lowe finds this same body among the dead in the wreckage! It seems someone went to a lot of trouble to disguise this as an accident. The film eventually leads to the trail of arms merchants and it's up to Lowe and Cummings to work it all out--with lots of witty repartee along the way. Smooth, easy-going and fun--this is a better B-mystery film--reasonably well written and enjoyable.
American stars Edmund Lowe and Constance Cummings went over to Great Britain to film this Hitchcock like mystery thriller in 1936. Lowe went back to the USA, but Ms. Cummings stayed in Great Britain where she resided for the rest of her career.Lowe is a private detective and Cummings works for an insurance company and both are trying to find a killer whose method of homicide is to either wreck trains to kill somebody or to cause a wreck to hide the body of someone he's already killed.In a manner like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint from North By Northwest, Lowe and Cummings exchange some very witty dialog. Other Hitchcock pictures that you will see elements of here in Seven Sinners are The Thirty Nine Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Foreign Correspondent.This wrecker is a pretty clever guy and it is only in the final minutes that our intrepid heroes realize who it is. And I don't think the audience will realize it either.All that's missing is Alfred Hitchcock's portly cameo.
Neil-117 is quite correct, the film makers were given permission by the Southern Railway to smash an old locomotive and carriages into a lorry on a disused branch line, hence the spectacular train crash.I think his other comments are a little unfair. The film is taken from a play called 'The Wrecker' by Arnold Ridley (who also wrote 'The Ghost Train' and later became Private Godfrey in 'Dad's Army'). The whole point of the plot is that a serial murderer is staging train crashes to disguise his crimes.Of course the film is dated but it's good, well-paced entertainment. If you enjoy Hitchcock's British thrillers (especially 'The Lady Vanishes', also a Launder and Gilliatt screenplay) you'll like this one.