Dir: Seth Holt | Cast Maggie Smith, George Nader, Bernard Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Harry H Corbett | UK Drama 89’
After a lengthy and arduous apprenticeship at Ealing Studios at the eleventh hour Seth Holt finally got the chance to direct a film himself.
Like many of his colleagues at Ealing Holt had chafed at the limits placed on this long-held ambition by the benevolently dictatorial Michael Balcon.
With contributions from both Maggie Smith – herself making her screen debut – and with a script by Kenneth Tynan seen today this bleak fable glacially shot by Paul Beeson with a jazz score by Dizzy Reece seems that it might have ushered in a new direction for Ealing. But that was to prove not to be and the title was ultimately to provide sadly appropriate. @RichardChatten