Great Film overall

A different way of telling a story

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I love this film for the atmosphere. It seems to be always October, the dark time of the year, and the cast seem to love wandering about a lonely common at night. John Mills comes out of hospital to live in a residential hotel. The other guests are a motley crew, beautifully played by Joyce Carey and others. Miss Heap, who is always moaning "Miss Selbeeee! Could we have more coal?" Joyce Carey, with her beautiful face which hides a soul that only cares about bridge and gossip. The weedy Mr Pope, who turns out to be rather a good egg. And Miss Newman, the underwear model with the dubious boyfriend. (That camel-hair overcoat is a giveaway.) The hotel is almost a character in its own right with its furnishings unchanged for at least 40 years. John Mills falls for the sister of a colleague, whose family represents normality and thick- headed respectability. She is played by Joan Greenwood, with an unflattering hairdo and unbelievably frumpy clothes. Kay Walsh as the model, with her stash of gin and book on horoscopes, seems much more amusing. I think someone should reinvent residential hotels.

....so says Molly (Kay Walsh) to Jim Ackland (John Mills), trying to show some hospitality when he gallantly fixes a fuse. At that moment she couldn't be further from the truth - even though he is getting a second chance at life after spending time in a mental institution, he still blames himself for the death of a little girl (Mill's own daughter Juliette) in his care and life in a typical London boarding house isn't helping. On his first evening he instantly falls foul of a couple of elderly residents when he refuses to sit in for a rubber of bridge.At times he feels suicidal, but time, a steady job at a chemical plant and new friends, including sympathetic and understanding Jenny (beautiful Joan Greenwood) show him that life can be worth living. Even though Bosley Crowther called it "second rate" believe me he didn't know what he was talking about. This is a superlative movie and, I believe, shows John Mills in one of his best performances - he was always at his best depicting decent "everymen" who find circumstances around them spinning out of control. With a screenplay by Eric Ambler, based on his book, you can't expect anything else but excellence.One of the residents, Molly, has a complicated love life. She is in love with a married man, a complete bounder who has no intention of divorcing his wife and is also having to fend off unsavoury advances from a very creepy lodger, Mr. Peachy (Edward Chapman). When her body is found on the common, the movie's pace really picks up. She had turned to Jim for friendship - her confidant exterior masked a lonely girl away from her family. Jim finds through a series of circumstances (fixing the light in her room, giving her some money so she can return to her family) that someone has implicated him as the main suspect and of course the police don't believe him.It doesn't help that the cheque Jim gave her is found crumpled near her body and Jim admits to walking on the common that night. The cinematography is moody and atmospheric. It is always dark and foggy outside the boarding house, with vignettes of residents (helpful, though nosey landlady, querolous older guest, elderly lady forever wanting coal and helpful young man) giving the movie an edge. With no support from the police (they haven't believed him from the start) he finds he has to literally go on the run to prove the police wrong. From then on he is just one jump ahead of the law - there is one exciting scene when he is looking for some "left luggage" at the railway station and needs quick thinking to escape the claustrophobic compartment without bumping into an eager constable.Kay Walsh had already co-starred with John Mills in "This Happy Breed" and "In Which We Serve" and later with films like "Oliver Twist" and "Stage Fright" proved herself a superb character actress. If you ever get a chance to see Adrianne Allen (Joyce Carden) in "The Night of June 13th" (1932) you'll see a really fine performance and also see why she was such a success on the West End.

The October Man (1947)A tightly constructed, well acted, moody, night drenched murder mystery. Very British, very good. Is it amazing? No, but it beats old t.v. hands down. I mean, it's a layered, nuanced, gradually evolving story with some real feeling to it. But it's also a packaged affair, neatly imagined and in the ends not a bit surprising. The romance, at least, is satisfying--the couple seems a good match.Eric Ambler, who wrote and produced, was a high visibility popular author at the time, and you have to assume the movie feels as close to the writer's intentions as possible. Director Roy Ward Baker is only on his second film here, and it shows a natural talent for economy and drama. (He would later direct the Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe suspense noir, "Don't Bother to Knock" during a stay in Hollywood.) His most famous film might now be "A Night to Remember" because it was the most complete telling of the Titanic story leading up to Cameron's.In a seemingly British way, the story here is neatly contained. Agatha Christy comes to mind when the main character enters the hotel where most of the action occurs, and we get to know the small number of residents there, each a distinct type. And when the murder (of course) happens, we are led to suspect this person or that. Or at least we are supposed to. The movie makes the perp all too obvious, even before the crime, so you have to depend on how well the story is told instead of being curious who done it.And it's well told indeed. The supporting cast, including the love interest, is competent. The leading man, the falsely accused victim of an earlier bus crash, is rather excellent, played by veteran serious actor John Mills. And all the foggy night scenes, and train and train station sections, ought to make those of you nostalgic for old Britain very happy.

The superb John Mills plays a man with a history of emotional imbalance. He moves into a rooming house peopled by the sorts who might be charming in a Barbara Pym novel. Here they are increasingly less charming: There's the classic nosy landlady. There's an elderly resident who begs for more coal on the fire: The way she's written to do this made me think of a leitmotif from an Eliot poem.There's a homely bachelor; there's an attractive young woman involved with a married man. And, there are assorted eccentrics thrown in as well.Mills meets Joan Greenwood, she of the dark, husky voice. And a murder takes place.That's all I will say, lest I give anything at all away: Try hard to see this little beauty of a film, knowing as little of the plot in advance as I did. Indeed, before today, I had never heard of it.If it were an American film of this period it would be called a film noir. It has all the elements but I don't think I'd call it one. It's a psychological thriller, a mystery.The secondary roles are cast superbly in every case. It's tense, filled with fascinating characters -- it lacks almost nothing. And the two stars could scarcely be better.