The Delavine Affair is a snappy B movie from 1954 (some sources say 1955) which was based on a story called Winter Wears a Shroud, written by Robert Chapman. I've not been able to find out anything much about Chapman or the original story, but the film is a competent mystery which, like so many crime films of that era, featured some very good actors as well as the occasional rather wooden lead.
The lead in this case is Peter Reynolds, who hailed from Wilmslow, and sadly died young. Here he plays a newspaper agency man called Banner who is contacted by a hellfire preacher called Gospel Joe. But when he goes to see Joe, he finds him dead. The police turn up, having been tipped off that Joe has been mrudered, and our hero becomes the prime suspect.
He has the good fortune to be married to Honor Blackman, but she thinks he spends too much time at work, and has taken up with an admirer played by Gordon Jackson. Banner discovers that there appears to be a connection between Joe's death and a robbery - the as yet unsolved Delavine jewel theft - which took place some time back.
Banner's investigations bring him into contact with a mixed bag of characters, played by Michael Balfour and Katie (The Ladykillers) Johnson. There are a number of pleasing plot twists, and overall this is a decent crime film, unpretentious but perfectly competent. I'd be interested to know more about Winter Wears a Shroud, if any readers of this blog are familiar with it.
Showing posts with label Gordon Jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gordon Jackson. Show all posts
Wednesday, 20 September 2017
Monday, 27 March 2017
Death Goes to School - 1953 film review
I was intrigued to find Death Goes to School , a 1953 black and white movie, on the Talking Pictures schedule recently. Public schools were a rather popular setting for traditional mysteries. Nicholas Blake, R.C. Woodthorpe, Christopher Bush, Gladys Mitchell and others wrote good examples, using the "closed society" of the English public school to provide a conveniently limited pool of suspects. But I'd never heard before of this film, or the novel on which it was based, Death in Seven Hours by Stratford Davis.
I discovered that Stratford Davis was a pen-name for Maisie Sharman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with the film's director, Stephen Clarkson. I know little about Sharman, but it seems she enjoyed a remarkably lengthy, if not exactly prolific, career as a screenwriter. According to that useful source IMDB, her first credit was a 1938 film called Night Journey, and her last was a 1973 TV mystery, written as Miriam Sharman. If anyone reading this blog is familiar with her work, I'd like to know more.
Death Goes to School is an unpretentious mystery, but competent and still watchable. It benefits from the fact that three key roles went to actors of genuine quality. Barbara Murray plays the likeable young schoolteacher whose scarf is used to strangle a nasty colleague. Gordon Jackson plays the rather macho police inspector and the ever-reliable Sam Kydd is his sidekick. They get the best out of their parts. There's quite a nice joke when Barbara Murray gives as her alibi the fact that she was reading a thriller called...Death in Seven Hours.
The plot is competent rather than dazzling. Various people at the school have a motive, as the thinly characterised victim really was very unpleasant. Someone outside the school then comes into the frame. I felt that the motive for the murder wasn't terribly convincing, but despite this weakness, the film held my attention. As with so many of those Fifties B-movies, it's decent light entertainment.
I discovered that Stratford Davis was a pen-name for Maisie Sharman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with the film's director, Stephen Clarkson. I know little about Sharman, but it seems she enjoyed a remarkably lengthy, if not exactly prolific, career as a screenwriter. According to that useful source IMDB, her first credit was a 1938 film called Night Journey, and her last was a 1973 TV mystery, written as Miriam Sharman. If anyone reading this blog is familiar with her work, I'd like to know more.
Death Goes to School is an unpretentious mystery, but competent and still watchable. It benefits from the fact that three key roles went to actors of genuine quality. Barbara Murray plays the likeable young schoolteacher whose scarf is used to strangle a nasty colleague. Gordon Jackson plays the rather macho police inspector and the ever-reliable Sam Kydd is his sidekick. They get the best out of their parts. There's quite a nice joke when Barbara Murray gives as her alibi the fact that she was reading a thriller called...Death in Seven Hours.
The plot is competent rather than dazzling. Various people at the school have a motive, as the thinly characterised victim really was very unpleasant. Someone outside the school then comes into the frame. I felt that the motive for the murder wasn't terribly convincing, but despite this weakness, the film held my attention. As with so many of those Fifties B-movies, it's decent light entertainment.
Wednesday, 28 December 2016
Blind Date - 1959 film review
Blind Date (no, nothing to do with Cilla Black's TV show) is a film that was re-named Chance Encounter in the US. I'm not sure that either title is quite right, but Blind Date was the name Leigh Howard gave to the source novel, published in 1955. Four years later, Joseph Losey, a capable director, made the film.It's a murder mystery, but it also seems to aim to be something more.
The film begins rather oddly, with Hardy Kruger walking along a London street, clearly happy, and accompanied by a jaunty tune (the work of the young Richard Rodney Bennett, no less). He lets himself into a well-appointed flat, but whoever he hopes to meet isn't there. He finds some money in an envelope bearing his name, but then the police turn up. Gordon Jackson plays a stolid sergeant, soon pushed to one side by a Welsh inspector played by Stanley Baker and another inspector, this time a posh fellow whom the Welshman clearly doesn't care for.
Unfortunately for Kruger's character, the body of a woman is then found in the flat. He is reluctant to explain himself, but eventually his story comes out in a series of flashbacks. He's a struggling Dutch painter who was seduced by a French woman who is older, richer, and married. (She's played by Micheline Presle, a legend of French cinema, who is still going strong at the age of 84). He protests his innocence, but he is an obvious suspect.
There's quite a nice plot twist, but I felt the mystery element of the story was a bit thin. And gifted though Bennett was, I didn't feel that his score improved the film or even captured its mood. Losey devotes quite a lot of time to issues of the class divide in Britain, and this is interesting, though again laboured. There is, however, rich compensation in the presence of Baker, one of the most charismatic actors of his time. He died at the age of 48, weeks after it was announced he was to receive a knighthood in Harold Wilson's resignation honours list. Wilson was a friend of Baker's, but for me Baker deserved to be honoured. I'm not sure I've ever seen him give an indifferent performance, and at his best he was brilliant. Here, he makes an okay film something a little better than just okay.
The film begins rather oddly, with Hardy Kruger walking along a London street, clearly happy, and accompanied by a jaunty tune (the work of the young Richard Rodney Bennett, no less). He lets himself into a well-appointed flat, but whoever he hopes to meet isn't there. He finds some money in an envelope bearing his name, but then the police turn up. Gordon Jackson plays a stolid sergeant, soon pushed to one side by a Welsh inspector played by Stanley Baker and another inspector, this time a posh fellow whom the Welshman clearly doesn't care for.
Unfortunately for Kruger's character, the body of a woman is then found in the flat. He is reluctant to explain himself, but eventually his story comes out in a series of flashbacks. He's a struggling Dutch painter who was seduced by a French woman who is older, richer, and married. (She's played by Micheline Presle, a legend of French cinema, who is still going strong at the age of 84). He protests his innocence, but he is an obvious suspect.
There's quite a nice plot twist, but I felt the mystery element of the story was a bit thin. And gifted though Bennett was, I didn't feel that his score improved the film or even captured its mood. Losey devotes quite a lot of time to issues of the class divide in Britain, and this is interesting, though again laboured. There is, however, rich compensation in the presence of Baker, one of the most charismatic actors of his time. He died at the age of 48, weeks after it was announced he was to receive a knighthood in Harold Wilson's resignation honours list. Wilson was a friend of Baker's, but for me Baker deserved to be honoured. I'm not sure I've ever seen him give an indifferent performance, and at his best he was brilliant. Here, he makes an okay film something a little better than just okay.
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