Dir: Carol Reed | Cast: Margaret Lockwood, John Lodge, Rene Ray, Kathleen Harrison, Merle Tottenham | Drama
The film that conclusively showed Carol Reed was a director to watch starts with a wry shot of adjacent newsstands grimly warning of the storm clouds over Europe, and the rain clouds over Britain.
Kathleen Harrison was such a hit she later got her own series (here she’s married not to Jack Warner, but Wally Patch who even wears his bowler on holiday); also supplying comedy is Rene Ray and Merle Tottenham knocking back Martinis by the tumbler).
That taken care of, gravitas is supplied by John Lodge pining after his wife who died in childbirth (all too common in those days) and Hugh Williams and Margaret Lockwood slipping away for what we’d now call a ‘dirty weekend’. When Miss Lockwood (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) flees in panic she falls straight from the pot into the fire by accepting a lift from absconding manager Garry Marsh. @RichardChatten