Mr Denning Drives North - 1951 film review

It's a long time since I read Alec Coppel's novel Mr Denning Drives North, but I remembered it as a decent suspense story, and this prompted me to watch the film version, made in 1951, a couple of years after the book appeared. Coppel was a capable writer, with a particular gift for dialogue and building tension. He was one of the writers of Vertigo, one of the finest of all crime films - some would say the finest.

The protagonist is played by John Mills, who as ever is a thoroughly decent Englishman. He's well off, happily married, and has an attractive daughter. But at the start of the film, he's plagued by nightmares, and it appears that he has a guilty conscience. It's soon clear that he's implicated in a murder case, and before long he confesses the truth to his wife, played by Phyllis Calvert.

His daughter had fallen for a loathsome chap, played by Herbert Lom, and Denning wanted to buy off the blackguard. He persuades him to write a letter breaking off the relationship, on payment of £500, but when he feels that his daughter's honour is insulted, he hits the chap, who falls on the hearth and dies. Manslaughter rather than murder, I'd have thought, but our hero makes the first of several extremely foolish decisions when he decides to cover up the crime.

He doesn't actually drive all that far north to dispose of the corpse; the southern reaches of the Home Counties, by the look of things. But the plot thickens when the body disappears. Denning continues to behave so foolishly that I found it rather difficult to root for him, but I did admire the way in which Coppel piled on the complications. It's a crafty story, and the film benefits from a good cast, with Wilfred Hyde White especially entertaining as a mortuary attendant. Bernard Lee plays a good natured cop, and Sam Wanamaker is a young American patents lawyer who falls for Denning's daughter and unwittingly does his utmost to bring Denning's crime to the attention of the authorities. It's pretty good entertainment.

Town on Trial - film review

I'm rather surprised to find that I don't seem to have mentioned Town on Trial, one of my favourite Fifties British crime films on this blog before. I first saw, and liked, the movie when I was quite young and I've enjoyed it a number of times since. One new thought occurred to me on the latest viewing the other day was that, in essentials, it is rather like a forerunner of Broadchurch. A tough, troubled cop comes to a small town to investigate a murder, and finds several skeletons in the closets of the locals, who close ranks against him.

Suffice to say that I enjoyed Town on Trial just as much as I enjoyed Broadchurch, although of course the latter benefits from the cliffhangers of a serial, and high quality production values. Taking the role in the film equivalent to David Tennant's in the TV show is John Mills, master of the stiff upper lip, as a cop who fancies the American niece of one of the suspects, a local doctor.

A girl is strangled and Mills soon makes himself unpopular, antagonsing the local Casanova and doyen of the tennis club as well as a number of other worthies. One of them, the repressive father of a pretty young girl who was friendly with the deceased, is played by Geoffrey Keen, who specialised in gruff hard man roles in film and TV for many years. I remember him best from The Troubleshooters, which is going back a very long time. But he also featured in six James Bond films.

The decisive clue to the killer's identity is one that has always stuck in my mind. I don't know a great deal about the screenplay writers, Ken Hughes and Robert Westerby, but the script is smoothly professional and they both did plenty of film work. Mills is as good as usual, but it's sad that Barbara Bates, his love interest, was evidently a troubled woman who later committed suicide. Elizabeth Seal, the young woman desperate to escape the nest, soon gave up acting, which was a pity, but other cast members including Raymond Huntley and Dandy Nicholls enjoyed successful careers. All in all, an entertaining, well-made film -and recognising that similarity to Broadchurch reminds me how fascinated we are by crime in "closed" communities.

The Long Memory revisited

After I posted about the film of The Long Memory, I was contacted by Liz Gilbey, a long-time contributor to CADS, who had written about the book previously. A very enjoyable correspondence has followed, and Liz has kindly supplied both the images above from the original book (the photo depicts the talented but now forgotten author Howard Clewes) and the following guest post about this very interesting story:

'Philip Davidson has served seventeen years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Released on parole, he hunts down the two people who lied and condemned him.

So far, so standard fare. But Howard Clewes wrote a crime masterpiece with this book, still fresh and exciting when read 59 years on. Little wonder it was compared to early Graham Greene when first reviewed.

There is a complication to what starts as a tale of revenge. One of the perjurors is married to a policeman who investigated the case. He has always had his suspicions.....and he is also the narrator of the book.

Inspector Lowther is not a hero nor is he an admirable man. He had his suspicions at the time of the murder, but quashed them; because he fell in love with Fay - Davidson's girlfriend - when investigating the case, and love made him blind.

But now Davidson is out seeking revenge, and the marriage has faded into inertia. Lowther fears for his wife, and his conscience is needling him about the miscarriage of justice, even though he had tampered with evidence to put Fay in a good light, and his career will be destroyed if this comes to light.

The book is psychologically rich and complex, dealing with love, marriage, injustice, people smuggling, displaced persons, poverty, social and industrial decay. The characters are strong, from the over conscientious reporter on the case to the harrassed wives. Even the dead man who turns out not to be dead at all. And the setting - the Thames estuary - has it's own grim identity.

Coming to the book from the film (increasingly being accalimed as a great British film noir) it is remarkable how faithful one is the the other - sometimes you have to check to make sure the book was indeed written first, for action and descriptions replicate wholesale, as if the author is directing and even casting the film. The only odd man out is John Mills as Davidson. Davidson is written as a hulk of a man, not the physically slight Mills (whose confidence building participation was part of a brave rush of films seen at the time as mere quota quickies to keep the British film industry alive.) But his characterisation is true and strong.

Story changes for the film strengthen and simplify some themes and accomodate the narrator's inner musings without detracting from the book.

Track down and enjoy the book, see the film. Both are true masterpieces, spare and strong.'

I've not yet read the book, but I certainly endorse Liz's views about the film. Thanks, Liz!

The Long Memory

I chanced upon the 1952 movie The Long Memory by accident when browsing the schedules – and it was a really good find. Some people describe it as a British film noir. It certainly moves at a lively pace from start to finish – and you can’t be at all sure how it will finish, which is a bonus.

John Mills stars as Davidson, a man just released from prison after serving 12 years for a murder he didn’t commit. He was convicted thanks to perjured testimony and now he is out for revenge. By a pleasing twist, the girl who betrayed him (to save her own father) is now married to a senior cop who is keeping an eye on what he is up to. Davidson is, perhaps understandably, a grumpy chap, and even when a glamorous young Norwegian woman befriends him and takes up residence in the ruined boathouse that is his adoptive home, he is amazingly unimpressed – to begin with, anyway.

The film, set mainly on the Thames estuary, an evocative locale, was directed by Robert Hamer, who was responsible for one of my favourite films, Kind Hearts and Coronets. Hamer, a gay alcoholic who died young, was clearly a superb director and I’d like to know more about him and his work.

The cast, also, is excellent. It includes Geoffrey Keen (who later appeared in several Bond films), Thora Hird, John Slater (later in Z Cars), John Horsley (later the doctor in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin) and the young Christopher Beeny (later in Upstairs, Downstairs). I found the story entertaining and the script taut. It was based on a book by Howard Clewes, of whom I must admit I’ve never heard. Recommended.