Compact omnibus film from Ealing Studios opens at the finish with a fiery train crash before stepping back three days to simultaneously shuffle thru four non-integrated storylines of passengers & crew prior to boarding the doomed train. Who will survive? The answers won’t surprise you, but getting there is worth the trip as a trio of directors take on the four separate narratives. Basil Dearden has the two melodramas (The Actor; The P.O.W.); Sidney Cole tackles love & marriage in The Engine Driver; then Charles Crichton holds the reins for comic relief (the usual weak link) with The Composer, teasing out a probable affair with a glam piano soloist for our composer/conductor before he discovers that Missus Knows Best. UNFAITHFULLY YOURS it ain’t, but thanks to Valerie Hobson as the missus, it goes down smoother than it might. Home & hearth amongst railway families sees long time engineer Jack Warner hoping for a desk job while his daughter toys with her lineman fiancé. Head & shoulders above these are the pair of Dearden helmed mellers. Escaped German P.O.W overstaying his British pass while English ‘wife’ steals just enough money to buy passage-for-one to Canada. Then a debuting Peter Finch, unrecognizably young & gaunt, is a rep actor in a mid-level Shakespeare touring outfit* whose estranged wife surprises him at his rented room with unreasonable demands. With its shockingly unexpected murder of opportunity, this compressed film noir significantly raises the stakes. Finch alarmingly good. A bit more toughness over the outcomes at the crash site would have lifted this film up a notch or two. But with its tasty cast and flavorsome low-end London location shooting, it’s still intensely watchable.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Europe seems far more enamored of portmanteaux films than here in the States.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Nice touch showing these mediocre traveling players rehearsing their road trip Shakespeare in an unheated theater while wearing hats, scarves & overcoats for warmth.
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