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Friday, November 1, 2019

ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE / THE FUGITIVE (1939)

Best known for his classic version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL/’51 (the Alastair Sim one), this earlier film by British director Brian Desmond Hurst is a real find. Consistently imaginative, it goes from a ‘kitchen-sink’ realism in Act One, to Act Two’s noirish paranoia before ending with jolts of German Expressionism in its man-on-the-run Act Three. Working from a novel by ODD MAN OUT author F.L. Green, noirish tints are backed up by composer Miklós Rózsa, and the expressionistic look by UFA seasoned cinematographer Günther Krampf. Still, the film largely belongs to that classically-trained everyman, Ralph Richardson, in the midst of a tremendous 1939 (FOUR FEATHERS; CLOUDS OVER EUROPE; THE LION HAS WINGS), typically superb as a much liked barber in a declining London nab, tempted into a robbery-of-opportunity when he spies a pile of loot thru an open window on a backstreet. A windfall that soon blows back on him, eating away home, family, work; a bad situation compounded by the murder of a would-be blackmailer. And the whole neighborhood seems to know who did it, so too the police. But lacking hard evidence, only a guilty conscience, and constant surveillance, will send the pressure over the boiling point. With its memorable cast (Diana Wynyard, Glynis Johns, Sara Allgood, Romney Brent) and strong tenement flavor, studio production details nicely matched to some grubby real-life locations, Richardson’s downward spiral makes for a devastating character study. Easy to find on line, and worth sticking out a dupey print that happily improves as is goes along.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Is this the first film to represent a murder by showing a record playing out? If not, it gets a unique spin with the needle coming to a stop as the wind-up Victrola runs down.

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