The ambitions of Roy & John Boulting exceed their talent in this tricky time-traveling saga that finds Michael Redgrave hiding from a world on the cusp of war to tend lonely Thunder Rock lighthouse in Lake Michigan, content to fill his downtime conjuring up fantasy lives peopled from an old passenger log of a ship that sunk 100 years ago. And thru their lives, or rather thru his imagination of their possible lives, he eventually finds a path back to the troubled modern world. A dizzyingly fine idea, if only the Boultings had the poetic gifts & technical chops to pull it off.* Along with Redgrave, Lilli Palmer, Finlay Currie, a young & striking James Mason and the little known Frederick Valk (like a thicker Conrad Veidt) are all good enough to pull off some of the deep-dish ideas, and the production has its moments, especially in miniatures & set design that capture a fanciful tone too often missing. But the story foundation won’t hold. Watch for a telltale shift that finds ghostly Ship Captain Currie flipping the conceit to sample Redgrave’s modern life as an international reporter before he retreated to his lighthouse life to see what's missing from the conversation.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger pull this sort of thing off with sophisticated brio in A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN/’46.
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