Girl in the News (1940)

Girl in the News is a fairly early British Carol Reed crime thriller, released in 1940.

Margaret Lockwood stars as Nurse Graham, a young lady with a very unfortunate employment history. She had been employed as nurse to an elderly lady who died of an overdose of sleeping tablets. Nurse Graham was a beneficiary under the old lady’s will. Nurse Graham is charged with murder. She is defended by up-and-coming barrister Stephen Farringdon (Barry K. Barnes). The case against her is purely circumstantial and more than a little flimsy. Farringdon has no great difficulty in securing her acquittal.
This is all very satisfactory since we, the audience, already know that she is innocent.

A nurse who has been accused of murdering one of her patients, even if acquitted, is going to have trouble finding another position. Nurse Graham does eventually get get another job, by giving her name as Lovell. It is a position as nurse to an invalid, Edward Bentley.

Edward Bentley is a rich invalid with a young wife. After a short time Bentley dies, of poisoning, in circumstances that are extraordinarily similar to that earlier case. It’s no great surprise that Nurse Graham finds herself on trial for murder yet again.

Stephen Farringdon has become more than a little fond of Nurse Graham and he is convinced of her innocence. Once again he defends her, at her second trial for murder. The similarity of the two cases obviously suggests that she is guilty. It certainly convinces his friend Bill Mather (Roger Livesey) at Scotland Yard that she is guilty. Farringdon however has the idea that it’s the very similarity of the two cases that proves that Nurse Graham is innocent.

The centrepiece of the movie is the courtroom scene of the second trial. Extended courtroom scenes are a risk. By their very nature they’re talky and static. It helps if you have some charismatic acting. The acting here is perhaps not quite charismatic solid enough but it’s solid enough. It’s also essential to have the defence counsel pull some kind of legal rabbit out of the hat to provide the major courtroom shock. This movie definitely delivers the goods on that count.

Margaret Lockwood was probably the biggest female star in British movies of the 40s. She was particularly good as a bad girl (in movies like The Wicked Lady) or at least as an ambiguous heroine (in movies like The Man in Grey). She gives a good performance here although her character is more passive than the characters Lockwood usually played.

Barry K. Barnes makes a pretty good hero. He’s besotted by Nurse Graham but he’s no fool. When he defended her the first time he was fairly sure she was innocent, but not entirely sure. He ends up believing her to be totally innocent but his belief is by no means purely emotional.

There are plenty of fine British character actors on hand, including Felix Aylmer (one of my favourites). Roger Livesey is outrageous but entertaining, as usual.

Carol Reed’s genius had not yet blossomed to its full effect and while it’s well-made this movie lacks the assurances and the style of later masterpieces like Odd Man Out and Fallen Idol (and of course The Third Man).

This is one of six movies in VCI’s British Cinema Classic B Film Collection Volume 1 boxed set. The transfer of Girl in the News is quite acceptable although it’s certainly not pristine. These are very obscure movies so we should be grateful that they’re available at all, and at a very reasonable price.

Girl in the News is a neat little murder mystery/courtroom thriller. While the identity of the criminal is probably not going to come as any great surprise the plot does have some other interesting features.

Definitely of interest to Carol Reed fans. Highly recommended.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes was based on Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel The Wheel Spins. The novel is somewhat clumsy in execution and is far from satisfactory but the central story idea had obvious cinematic possibilities. Screenwriters Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder were able to streamline the story and the result was a light-hearted comedy thriller that is one of the most engaging films of Hitchcock’s early British period.

Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) is a spoilt rich English girl on holiday in an obscure central European country. She feels that she has now experienced everything that life has to offer and all that is left now is marriage. She is after all in her early twenties and life has little more to offer someone of such advanced years. 

Now the season is almost over and it’s time for the motley collection of English visitors to head back to England.

Just before boarding the train Iris receives an accidental blow to the head. She’s not really injured but it leaves her with a headache and it will have consequences.

On the train she shares a compartment with a mysterious central European baroness, an amiable Italian family and Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), a slightly dotty late middle-aged English spinster. Iris would not usually tolerate such a companion but having left her friends behind at the hotel she is grateful to find someone who speaks English.

Then Miss Froy vanishes. It is as if she never existed, In fact everyone on the train seems determined to convince Iris that Miss Froy really is non-existent, a delusion brought on by that blow to the head.

The only person who seems to be inclined to believe her is young musicologist Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) but it soon becomes apparent that he doesn’t really believe her either. Iris had clashed with Gilbert at the hotel and conceived an immediate dislike for him but now she needs any ally she can find. Eventually Iris starts to think that perhaps she did imagine Miss Froy, and then she finds actual evidence of her existence, but the evidence vanishes as well.

If Miss Froy did exist then there is some kind of conspiracy afoot but as Gilbert points out, who on earth would want to harm such a harmless old lady? If she never did exist then perhaps Iris is not quite sane. That’s the opinion of the smooth Dr Hartz (Paul Lukacs) and he’s a brain expert so he should know.

The source novel has a melodramatic and somewhat outrageous plot but takes things fairly seriously. The screenplay makes the plot even melodramatic and even more outrageous and Hitchcock wisely elects to treat it as a light-hearted semi-comedic romantic romp. This succeeds perfectly. The film works as a fine suspense thriller, the comedy is genuinely funny and thanks to the two leads, Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave, the romance angle really sparkles.

Lockwood would go on to become the biggest star in British cinema in the 40s. She was just twenty-two when The Lady Vanishes was made but her performance is confident and assured. Iris is a selfish spoilt girl but being rather lonely and vulnerable on the train made her inclined to feel a certain affection towards the daffy but kind-hearted Miss Froy and the old lady’s disappearance leads Iris to perform the first truly unselfish and noble act of her life. She is going to save Miss Froy. In the course of this adventure Iris starts to grow up and starts to realise that her life might seem less empty if she tried thinking about other people rather than just herself. Lockwood handles the subtle character development very adroitly, and without turning Iris into a sentimental milksop.

Iris’s unselfish and rather courageous campaign to save Miss Froy has its effect on Gilbert as well. He had disliked Iris at first but now he suspects that there may be more to her. She might even turn out to be a young woman very much worth bothering with. Gilbert also grows up to some extent in the course of the film, and discovers that women can be rather nicer than he’d previously thought. The chemistry between Lockwood and Redgrave  is perfect.

A major highlight is the comic relief provided by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as two absurd cricket-obsessed Englishmen. This comic team would be featured in several other films, in which they would be equally delightful.

There are of course plenty of Hitchcockian touches, with a bravura opening sequence typical of his British period. This film demonstrated that Hitchcock’s apprenticeship was well and truly over. The unfortunate result for the British film industry was that the film also made it inevitable that Hollywood would soon lure him away.

The sequence with the magic boxes in the baggage compartment does little to advance the plot but it adds a touch of screwball comedy and it’s glorious fun.

The Lady Vanishes is magnificent entertainment. Highly recommended.

Night Train To Munich (1940)

Night Train To Munich was a fairly early directorial effort by Sir Carol Reed. Hitchcock had scored a major international hit the year before with The Lady Vanishes and Night Train To Munich is very much in the same style. It also attempts to mix comedy with suspense, and even has the comic relief provided by the same two actors - Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne (and they even play the same characters).

The events of the film take place shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Czech scientist Professor Bomasch (James Harcourt) has developed a new kind of armour-plating, far in advance of anything possessed by any other country. Not surprisingly when the Germans forcibly incorporate Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich they are hoping Bomasch will work for them. Bomasch and his daughter are equally determined not to have anything to do with the Nazis. 

Bomasch’s daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) is sent to a concentration camp where she meets Karl Marsen, a dissident German imprisoned for anti-Nazi activities. They make plans to escape. The complicated plot involves a number of different escapes as the action switches back and forth between England and the Continent. Anna meets various people who claim to want to help her but almost invariably they turn out not to be what they seem.

The first of the movie’s escapes is by aircraft but the later escape attempt uses a train as its setting (hence the film’s title). Trains are of course always ideal settings for suspense thrillers.

Margaret Lockwood was one of the British film industry’s biggest stars of the 1940s in movies like wonderful historical crime melodrama The Wicked Lady. She makes a fine heroine. Rex Harrison might seem an unlikely choice to play a spy but he throws himself into the part with enthusiasm, and even manages to be almost convincing as a German officer. Paul Henreid plays an important but ambiguous rôle as Karl Marsen. Marsen is a rather complex character who doesn’t always behave in the manner we expect. Rex Harrison plays his triple rôle with a fair amount of complexity as well. This refusal to conform to lazy stereotypes is one of the film’s biggest strengths.

The supporting cast includes stalwart British character actors like Roland Culver and Felix Aylmer (playing a decidedly uncharacteristic rôle in this film).

This film relies to a very large extent on miniatures work and matte paintings to represent its Central European settings. Of course it has to be admitted that in 1940 the film-makers could scarcely have contemplated doing location shooting in Czechoslovakia and Germany! The early scenes representing German bombers flying over Czech factories are fairly well done but the movie is let down by the climactic cable car scenes which are rather feeble.

Screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat had previously collaborated on The Lady Vanishes which obviously goes some way to explaining the similarities between the two movies.

The Criterion Collection DVD is not exactly overloaded with extras although it does include a reasonably interesting short documentary. The transfer is more than acceptable, with perhaps just a hint of graininess. Surprisingly, for a Criterion release, this one is not particularly overpriced.

This movie sees Carol Reed venturing into Hitchcock territory. The results are generally satisfactory although this movie certainly cannot compare with a masterpiece of suspense like The Lady Vanishes. It’s a movie that has always been rather in the shadow of Hitchcock’s more celebrated film. The comparisons are unfortunate - after all The Lady Vanishes is one of Hitchcock’s best movies. Night Train To Munich is still thoroughly enjoyable entertainment. Highly recommended.