NOWHERE TO GO (1958)

Winding down production, Ealing Studios’ penultimate film, best of the seven made after producer Michael Balcom moved the company to British M-G-M facilities, was ironically the most atypical Ealing film imaginable.  Purposefully so according to co-writer/debuting director Seth Holt.  Neither eccentric community comedy nor tidy kitchen-sink drama, but full-on Brit-noir, it might have starred Robert Mitchum @ RKO in the post-war ‘40s.  Holt gets right to it with a RIFIFI-influenced dialogue-free/docu-style jail break (outside POV), as Bernard Lee sets the stage for George Nader to bust free.  The first in a series of tense set pieces (Kenneth Tynan co-wrote) as Nader uses his considerable masculine charm (half John Hodiak/half David Farrar*) sidling up to a middle-aged widow with a fortune in coins to sell. (Why it’s silent & Early Talkie film star Bessie Love!)  He’ll be her agent, collect the cash, hide the loot, do time for the crime, then come out of prison after serving a relatively short sentence a very rich man.  Only things don’t go as smoothly as expected.  (Duh!)  Turns out the police aren’t quite as dumb as he hoped.  Co-conspirator Lee not exactly the honest crook he thought.  The local mob who promised to look the other way aren’t so willing when two people get killed.  And then there’s Maggie Smith.  Yep, Maggie Smith in her film debut (25 then; she’s shooting her latest, a one-woman stage play adaptation, 65 years later).  She bumps into Nader, or rather into the apartment he’s using, and a sort of rocky romance ensues.  (Truth be told, neither the off-screen murders nor the romantic angle fully worked out, but ain’t it always so in film noir?)  You’d never guess director Holt & lead Nader didn’t generate major careers out of this.  Smash stuff, deliciously dark under lenser Paul Beeson with a jangly jazz score from Dizzy Reece, the film a near classic awaiting rediscovery.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Never heard of George Nader?  You probably would have had he not been Universal stablemate with fellow closeted gay Rock Hudson.  Good friends, Nader took some of the heat off the Hudson rumor mill, but lost Stateside work because of it.