At his best working with regular writing partner Frank Launder (Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES/’38; Carol Reed’s NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH/’40), this WWII homefront tale finds Sidney Gilliat writing & directing on his own to negligible effect. Small beer as Private John Mills goes AWOL to chase down rumors his wife is ‘stepping out’ with local tough/wartime slacker Stewart Granger. That’s about it. Alastair Sim brings his amusing saturnine presence to a nothing role as the local doctor, introducing a neighborhood & present day scene of blitz-bombed row houses before we flashback to still intact homes where Mills’ discontented wife (Joy Shelton), stuck living with her in-laws, is also having a flashback, this one to her own happy wedding day. (This flashback within a flashback the only stylistic fillip in the pic.*) Talked into spending the day with Granger, the platonic pair stays one step ahead of Mills, himself but one step ahead of the military police. A few real location shots add interest (those depressingly bleak row house exteriors shrieking of middle-class defeat), and from an extended fight between Granger & Mills fought in a tiny room. Surprisingly effective, Granger towering over Mills who believably holds his own when not taking a few startling punches to the head. Sim returning to pull us back to the present and bring us up to date. Stirrings of future kitchen-sink drama, but no follow thru.
DOUBLE-BILL: *For piggyback flashbacks-within-flashbacks, hard to top PASSAGE TO MARSEILLES/’44 which stacks four or five running concurrently. (Like a Russian nesting doll.) Yet easy to keep track of with director Michael Curtiz and Casey Robinson script. OR: See British kitchen-sink drama get underway in IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY/’47.
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