Suspected Person (1942)

Suspected Person is a 1942 British crime thriller about American gangsters in London.

James Raynor (Clifford Evans) has double-crossed American mobsters Franklin (Robert Beatty) and Dolan (Eric Clavering) over a bank robbery. Raynor, an Englishman, had been working as a crime reporter in New York. Now Franklin and Dolan have figured out that Raynor was the one who pulled a fast one on them and that he has the fifty grand from the bank robbery. So they’re off to London to have a little talk with him, and maybe take him for a ride.

Scotland Yard knows the gangsters are on the way to England but Detective Inspector Thompson (David Farrar) has decided to let them into the country and keep an eye on them. He has a feeling they’ll lead him to the missing money, which will be a feather in his cap and be good for the prestige of the Yard. Detective Sergeant Saunders (William Hartnell) is not quite sure about all this - he thinks his boss might be trying to be a bit too subtle.

Thompson is trying to be very subtle. He goes undercover, taking a room at the hotel run by Raynor’s sister Joan (Patricia Roc). Raynor himself is trying to be even more clever, confident he can outwit Franklin and Dolan against whom he has a personal grudge. Raynor is playing a dangerous game and he may be endangering his girlfriend, night-club singer Carol Martin (Anne Firth).

So the plot is a double chase, with the American gangsters after Raynor while Inspector Thompson is after them. 

Writer-director Lawrence Huntington had a long if rather obscure career in B-pictures before making the move to television in the late 50s. His script is routine but serviceable. His directing is rather flat-footed. This film’s major problem is that it never really develops any sense of urgency or excitement.

At one point the gangsters are pursuing Raynor on a train. It’s almost impossible to go wrong in a thriller when you have vital scenes set on a train but Huntington totally fails to take any advantage of the train setting and these scenes just don’t deliver the goods.

Another major problem is the casting. Clifford Evans is just the wrong actor for this role. He’s too genteel to be convincing as someone who worked as a New York City crime reporter and then tried to double-cross a couple of very hard-boiled American mobsters. His bland performance undermines the film’s credibility.

David Farrar does a very fine job in his supporting role as Inspector Thompson but he would really have been a much better choice to play Raynor.

Patricia Roc on the other hand is terrific as Joan Raynor - she’s pert and charming and her performance is totally convincing. She and David Farrar have the right chemistry to make their romantic sub-plot work.

William Hartnell was often used in comic relief roles but this time he plays it pretty straight. The witty interplay between Farrar and Hartnell is always delightful and in fact is the highlight of the movie.

This movie was released in mid-1942. With the US having just entered the war you'd expect a British movie made at that time to be quite pro-American but in fact the reverse is true. There are quite a few not-so-subtle digs at the corruption of the American criminal justice system and there’s a general attitude that American gangsters might think they’re tough but they’re no match for Scotland Yard, or for a quick-witted Englishman.

The British police in this movie have such contempt for American criminals that even though they have good reason for thinking that Franklin and Dolan might be armed when it comes to the final showdown they don’t even bother carrying firearms (which of course British police are quite entitled to do in such circumstances). The clear implication is that British policemen have no need to resort to such barbarisms just to deal with a couple of New York hoodlums. It’s also notable that although Inspector Thompson contacts the New York police he gets no help from them.

Network’s DVD release is stock-standard for this company - no extras apart from an image gallery but a very good transfer.

Suspected Person is not a terrible movie by any means. It’s just a very average B-movie that doesn’t quite succeed in generating any real tension. The excellent performances of David Farrar, Patricia Roc and William Hartnell are the main reasons for watching this one. Probably worth a rental.

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.

Union Station (1950)

Union Station’s claims to noir status rest almost entirely on its style, but if style counts for anything then this movie, and especially the exciting climactic sequences, should certainly be noir enough for most people’s tastes.

Made by Paramount in 1950, as far as content is concerned it’s essentially a police procedural with thriller elements as well.

In feel it’s classic city noir. Although much of the action takes place (as the title suggests) in Union Station in Los Angeles it could be any railway station in any city of the US. The actually setting is, as it is in any good urban film noir, Noir City USA.

The story begins when a passenger on a train notices some suspicious behaviour by some  fellow passengers. She reports the matter, and thus is Lieutenant Bill Calhoun (William Holden) introduced into the story. He’s a railway cop, he’s a cop through and through, and he takes his job seriously. This report probably means nothing but he follows it up. In fact it’s far from being nothing - he has stumbled into a major kidnapping case.



The kidnapping victim is a blind girl. Her wealthy father receives a ransom demand for $100,000. A case as big as this will obviously involve more than just the railway police, and now Inspector Donnelly (Barry Fitzgerald) enters the action. Although belonging to different generations both the young Calhoun and the veteran Donnelly are professionals and right from the start they work together smoothly as a team. Since the ransom pickup is to be made in Union Station Donnelly recognises that he will need Calhoun’s knowledge of the workings of the station.

Joyce Willecombe (Nancy Olson), the woman who made the initial report, will be involved in the ongoing investigation as well - her ability to recognise several members of the kidnapping gang is  one of the few good leads the cop have at this stage.



Kidnapping is always a uniquely unpleasant crime but it’s made even more so by the fact the the victim is blind and the head of the gang is a particularly ruthless psychopath, Joe Beacom (Lyle Bettger). Donnelly and Calhoun know that the odds are that even if the ransom is paid the victim will be killed. In fact for all they know she may already be dead, but they have to act on the assumption that she’s alive and will remain so at least until the ransom is paid. The victim’s father clings to the belief that his daughter is still alive.

With someone like Joe Beacom involved the case can be just as hazardous for the other members of the gang as it is for the victim. He’s not a man who likes to leave loose ends lying around and his usual method dealing with such loose ends is fatally violent.



The screenplay by Sydney Boehm doesn’t try to be too clever. The plot is a basic one and the quality of the movie depends on how well it’s executed. And in this case it’s executed very well indeed. With a man like Rudolph Maté in the director’s chair, a man who earned five Oscar nominations as a cinematographer, you’d expect the movie to look good and it does. The cinematographer on the film was Daniel L. Fapp and between them he and Maté have achieved the perfect noir visual signature for this film.

Barry Fitzgerald had played sensitive cops numerous times by this stage of his career and his performance is assured and sympathetic. He works well with William Holden who turns in a very solid performance as a hardboiled but dedicated cop. Jan Sterling goes close to stealing the movie as Beacom’s girlfriend. She thinks she’s as hardboiled as he is, but even she doesn’t know what a vicious piece of work he is. Lyle Bettger makes a splendid noir psychopathic villain.



The DVD from Olive Films offers no extras but an excellent transfer. This is a very neglected and very professionally done hardboiled noirish crime thriller and we can be thankful to Olive Films for making it available to us in the DVD format.

Paramount productions tended to have high production values and this movie, even though it was not a major A picture, still benefits from the studio’s classy style which it combines very well with some excellent noir touches and the result is the sort of excellent mid-range movie that the studio system was so good at delivering. Railroad settings are always effective backdrops for thrillers and this movie is highly recommended.

Young Winston (1972)

Young Winston is an old-fashioned biopic. If such a movie were to be made today it would be a hatchet job. Larger-than-life heroes like Churchill are out of fashion. Richard Attenborough is quite content simply to present us with what is largely Churchill’s own version of his early life, and let us make up our own minds. We see Churchill’s flaws - his excessive ambition, his political ruthlessness, his glory-seeking. And we see his strengths - his conviction of his own destiny, his courage, his determination to succeed. Attenborough doesn’t try to tell us what we should think of Churchill. Whether that is a plus or a minus depends on your point of view.

Even in 1972 when it was released this was an old-fashioned movie, quite different from a movie like Patton. And at the time this was seen as a weakness. Today, to audiences grown tired of being bludgeoned by message pictures, it seems more like a virtue.

Churchill’s early life was so colourful that it would have been difficultif not impossible to make this a dull film. The young Churchill saw action on the Northwest Frontier of India with the Malakand Field Force, he saw further service in the Sudan under Lord Kitchener (where he participated in the charge of the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898) and then went to South Africa as a war correspondent, covering the Boer War for the Morning Post.



In South Africa he found fame. He was always anxious to be where the action was, not from an excess of courage so much as from a desperate need for material. Although born into the aristocracy (he was the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and a direct descendant of England’s greatest general, the 1st Duke of Marlborough) Churchill had to support himself from his writing. He managed to be on the scene when a British armoured train was ambushed, was captured and then escaped. His adventures became front page news.

The movie gives us plenty of spectacular action sequences but it is just as interested in its hero’s early attempts to forge a political career. Churchill’s father had been a prominent Tory Cabinet Minister but managed to destroy his own career. Young Winston was determined not to make the same mistake.



For Churchill war was a means of gaining fame, a springboard to political success. He was always quite open about this. His father Lord Randolph had alienated himself from his colleagues and being his son was more of handicap than an advantage to an aspiring politician, and his mother had managed to lose most of the family’s money. The young Churchill needed to make a name for himself, and he set about doing so.

The movie possibly puts too much emphasis on Winston’s relationships with his parents although this does give Robert Shaw as Lord Randolph and Anne Bancroft as Lord Randolph’s beautiful American wife Jennie the opportunity to give bravura performances.



The supporting cast is a roll call of British acting talent, with Sir John Mills, Anthony Hopkins, Patrick Magee and Edward Woodward all enjoying themselves enormously. The most remarkable thing about the movie though is Simon Ward’s performance in the title role. He looks like Churchill, he sounds like Churchill, he captures the Churchillian gift for theatricality and most of all he captures Churchill’s sense of destiny. He is so good in this role that he did a great deal of harm to his career, so identified did he become with this one role. But he really is superb. His speech in the House of Commons at the end of the movie is spell-binding.

Director Richard Attenborough is quite comfortable handling the grand action sequences, and he certainly had a gift for getting performances from actors. Critics then and since have felt that he failed to penetrate beneath the surface of the grandiose Churchillian façade. Perhaps he did, but at least he resisted the temptation to try to tear down a hero merely because he was a hero.



Whatever shortcomings this film has it has to be said that it is enormously entertaining and visually magnificent. And it’s certainly worth seeing just for Simon Ward’s uncanny performance. Recommended.

The Region 2 DVD looks terrific and includes interviews with Simon Ward and Richard Attenborough as extras.

The General (1926)

The General, released in 1926, is usually regarded as Buster Keaton’s masterpiece. Personally I’ve never been a fan of silent comedies but I do make an exception for Keaton.

I still think Our Hospitality is a funnier film, but The General does have its moments.



Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, an engine driver who tries to enlist in the Confederate army in the Civil War but is turned down on the grounds that he can serve the South better as an engineer than as a soldier. That earns him the scorn of his true love, Annabelle (Marion Mack). Well actually his first love is his locomotive,The General, but Annabelle runs a close second.

A year later Johnnie gets his opportunity to play the hero. Union spies steal The General, intending to head north with while demolishing the railroad line behind the engine to cut off supplies to the Southern forces. Johnnie sets off in pursuit, alone but undaunted. Eventually he not only steals back his beloved train, he also comes into possession of secret Union war plans. He has to make his way back to the Confederate lines with a train full of Union soldiers in hot pursuit.



When The General was stolen Annabelle was taken prisoner. He rescues her and she provides him with some help, and some hindrance.

This mad chase affords Keaton plenty of opportunities to display his gifts for visual humour. The movie is funny but it’s also exciting and rather moving - you can’t help rooting for the valiant if somewhat foolhardy Johnnie.



There’s not much to be said about Keaton’s acting. His deadpan expression was part of his style and it’s a style that worked for him.

As a writer and director he was innovative and imaginative. His visual gags are often complex and must have been an enormous challenge to film.



I don’t rate this movie quite as highly as most people do but it is undeniably funny, and it avoids the emotional manipulation practised by his great rival Chaplin. That in my opinion makes Keaton’s movies much more enjoyable than Chaplin’s.

The Region 4 DVD from Force Entertainment includes a couple of Keaton’s shorts. The Balloonatic is actually funnier than the main feature. Picture quality is pretty good.

Sleepers West (1941)

Sleepers West, released in 1941, was the second of seven 20th Century-Fox B-movies featuring private detective Michael Shayne. Shayne was created by Brett Halliday and appeared in a total of 77 novels. The later Mike Shayne books were standard hardboiled detective thrillers but the early books were apparently detective stories with a fairly strong helping of comedy, and these early books were clearly the inspiration for the movie series.

Unfortunately crime B-movies with an admixture of comedy were a dime-a-dozen in the 30s and 40s so the movies come across as being rather generic examples of the Hollywood B-movie. On the plus side the 20th Century-Fox Mike Shayne movies starred Lloyd Nolan, always a delightfully entertaining actor.

In Sleepers West Mike Shayne has to escort a key witness to give evidence at a murder trial. A difficult task in itself, since there are people who intend that this witness should not reach her destination alive.

The job is made doubly difficult by the fact that the witness is Helen Carlson (Mary Beth Hughes). Helen is a bubbly blonde and she’s a very pleasant young woman, but unfortunately she’s a young woman who is very fond of a drink. Preferably quite a few drinks. She’s also rather fond of male company. Persuading her to sit quietly in her compartment in the train and not get into trouble is a task that will tax Shayne’s ingenuity to the full.

To add to Shayne’s problems, Kay Bentley is also a passenger on the train. Kay is a newspaper reporter. She’s an old pal of Shayne’s and he likes her well enough but he knows from experience that if she gets even the faintest whiff of a good story there’ll be no stopping her.

Sure enough Mike’s fears are realised when Helen not only gets access to liquor, she gets access to a man as well. He’s running away from his wife, in search of adventure. And Helen seems like the kind of gal who could provide plenty of adventure.

Of course there is a killer on board the train as well, so Mike will have his hands well and truly full. And to make his existence even more miserable, Kay gets wind of Helen’s presence on the train.

The story is played more for good-humoured amusement than real suspense. There are a few tense moments but the bad guys are mostly bumbling incompetents and the railway detective who thinks he’s stumbled onto a big case is just as bad. He is convinced that Helen’s new boyfriend is an embezzler (in fact there is no embezzler of any kind on the train) and his attempts to pull off a daring arrest go disastrously awry.

It’s all entertaining enough in a low-key way. The likeable cast is a major asset. Lloyd Nolan as Mike Shayne is good-natured although the role doesn’t exactly stretch his acting talents.

Lynn Bari is good as Kay Bentley. Mary Beth Hughes steals the picture as Helen Carlson. She’s a bit of a bad girl but not she’s not really very bad. Mostly she’s just a girl who likes a good time and has had some bad breaks. She’s bubbly and charming.

The DVD (from the Fox Mike Shayne boxed set) is exceptionally good.

Lightweight but enjoyable B-movie fun. Recommended.

I've reviewed two more of the Mike Shayne movies, Michael Shayne, Private Detective and The Man Who Wouldn't Die.

Union Pacific (1939)

Union Pacific is a 1939 Cecil B. DeMille western, and in the story of the building of the first tran-continental railroad he found a tale with the grand sweep required of a DeMille movie. Released in 1939, it confirmed DeMille’s ability to make wonderfully entertaining epics.

In the 1860s the Union Pacific railroad is being built from east to west to link up with the Central Pacific railroad in California. Backroom deals by crooked bankers have in effect turned the project into a race with the Union Pacific facing ruin if they lose. And those who are determined that they will lose have hit upon an ingenious method of sabotage. Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy) has been given the job of supplying the workers building the railroad with cut-price booze, gambling and other distractions to slow down the construction.

To combat this menace the Union Pacific employs as trouble-shooter Civil War hero Captain Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea). Butler is tough, honest, a crack shot and thoroughly decent. He’s like a very tough Boy Scout.

Butler cleans up a lot of the problems by shooting people like gambler Jack Cordray (Anthony Quinn). He has more of a problem with Campeau’s chief lieutenant, Dick Allen (Robert Preston). He and Dick were old army buddies and they’re still good friends but now they’re on opposite sides. Even worse, they’re romantic rivals as well. They’re both in love with feisty Irish beauty Mollie Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck).

Mollie is the Union Pacific’s travelling postmistress. Her father is an engine driver. She was born into the world of the railways, it’s the only world she knows and she loves it.

While Jeff Butler is kept busy trying to counter the machinations of Sid Campeau Dick Allen has stolen a march on him in the romance stakes and Dick and Mollie are soon engaged. Jeff is too noble to do anything underhanded to come between them although he’s clearly still carrying a torch for Mollie.

The villains are suitably villainous and the heroes are suitably heroic. The cast is a strong one and all the players deliver exactly the performances that were required.

There’s plenty of action and excitement, there’s spectacle, there’s romance, there’s everything required to turn this film into box office gold and it was indeed a huge hit at the time. It might seem like an old-fashioned movie by today’s standards when we’re accustomed to seeing heroic subjects treated with cynicism and sneering, but it demonstrates that old-fashioned Hollywood showmanship has a great deal going for it. This is a supremely entertaining movie.

It’s also very politically incorrect - if that bothers you then you’re not going to like this movie one little bit.

Union Pacific is highly recommended and it's included in the wonderful DeMille DVD boxed set that came out a few years back, a set which I also recommend very very highly.

Twentieth Century (1934)

Since Twentieth Century was directed by the man who went on to become the unchallenged master of the screwball comedy, Howard Hawks, you’d expect that this 1934 Columbia movie might well be a very early example of the genre. And in fact it has most of the features you’d expect from this type of movie. And being a Howard Hawks movie you’d expect it to be very good, and you’d be right again.

John Barrymore is theatrical impresario Oscar Jaffe. He’s had a string of Broadway hits and he’s about to unveil his latest discovery, a young actress named Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard). Although she’s not Mildred for long - he’s renamed her Lily Garland. Unfortunately she’s absolutely terrible and everyone who works for him is convinced he’s finally taken leave of his senses. They beg him to get rid of her but he stubbornly insists that she has the makings of a great Broadway star, possibly the greatest of them all.

Oscar is in fact quite mad, but he turns out to be correct. Before long Lili Garland is the toast of Broadway. And she and Oscar are lovers. But to say their love is tempestuous would be an understatement of colossal proportions. This is no tempest - it’s a full-blown hurricane. Eventually Lily walks out and then commits the most unforgivable of all sins - she goes to Hollywood.

Oscar’s career takes an immediate nosedive. His attempts to groom new stars fail dismally. He has a string of flops over the next couple of years, which culminates in having to flee Chicago in disguise to avoid his debtors. He boards the Twentieth Century Limited, the most famous train in North America, bound for New York. But as luck would have it, Lily Garland is aboard the same train. His faithful business partners encourage him to make the attempt to patch things up with Lily and sign he to a new contract, this being his only hope of avoiding complete financial ruin. Of course things don’t work out neatly.

Hawks is in complete command. The pacing is frenetic. Having a script by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur certainly doesn’t hurt either. Have much of the action take place on the train is another asset - I’ve always firmly believed you just can’t make a boring movie set on a train.

And then there’s the cast. The supporting players are fine, but the movie’s two biggest assets are Lombard and Barrymore. They’re superb and the sparks fly whenever they’re on screen together. Barrymore is particularly good - it’s an outrageous totally crazed performance and it demonstrates that he was absolutely perfect for the screwball comedy genre.

The theatrical background works nicely since both Oscar and Lily are completely artificial creations - they’re so much a part of the theatre world that they treat the whole of life as a stage performance.

There’s really not a single weakness to this movie. It’s a delight from start to finish.

Rome Express (1932)

It’s always been my firm belief that you can’t really go wrong with a suspense movie set on a train. If the train happens to be an old-fashioned one with compartments and it happens to be travelling through several different European countries and there’s a hint of international intrigue in the air, then you have a sure-fire winner. Rome Express is a movie that provides ample confirmation of this theory.

This stylish 1932 British thriller pretty much establishes the formula for all subsequent suspense-on-a-train movies. It mixes mystery with humour, and a dash of romance. It has the requisite assortment of passengers. There’s a movie star, a gang of international art thieves, the obligatory garrulous bore for comic relief and the equally obligatory eccentric old lady. There’s a mild-mannered entomologist who turns out to be something quite different, and a couple of lovebirds heading off for a weekend of adultery in the sun.

The strong cast is headed by Conrad Veidt as an archetypal charming but sinister villain, and very entertaining he is too. Frank Vosper is delightful as M. Jolif, a dapper and deceptively efficient French detective. It will require all his resourcefulness to untangle the complex web of lies told by the various passengers on the Rome Express. Even the law-abiding passengers have their own reasons for being economical with the truth.

The plot involves a stolen painting, and attempts by the thieves to double-cross each other, attempts culminating in murder. Meanwhile two young couples find themselves mixed up in complicated romantic entanglements, while other passengers find themselves re-assessing their lives and hoping for an opportunity to make fresh starts.

The pacing is taut and the tension is ratchetted up by constant cross-cutting. The screenplay is by Sidney Gilliat, who also worked with such luminaries of the British film industry as Alfred Hitchcock (on another illustrious train movie, The Lady Vanishes) and Sir Carol Reed.

This is a movie that looks surprisingly modern, with Walter Forde directing with flair and confidence, and coming up with some nifty camera angles. A very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable movie. Highly recommended.