Unheralded romantic triangle from journeyman French director Edmond T. Gréville, here working in Britain, hits the ground running with a meet-cute for university student Linden Travers and businessman Hugh Williams (he spills tea on her at a café), followed by an all-night date and a promise to rush back after his overseas trip. But when an ill wind blows his telegraphed proposal away, she settles, rather happily, for older professor Paul Lukas. FIVE YEARS LATER: Williams returns to visit the professor, unaware that his young wife is . . . Yikes! Basic as it is, this Quota Quickie is a real treat to watch as someone, writer Basil Mason?, cinematographer (later big time producer/director) Ronald Neame?, surely not Gréville, has loaded all sorts of stylish visual tricks from the late silent film era vocabulary and made an unusually good job of it. Cantered angles, extreme close-ups, associative editing, ‘rhymed’ matching dissolves between scenes, split screens & subliminal montages with moving mattes, the works. And only a few coming off as arbitrary showoff to keep our minds off the time worn plot. Good perfs, too, not only from the three leads, but also by nosy, jealous housekeeper Marie Ney, willing to take even her beloved professor down with her. As long as you don’t expect too much, this is quite the find. And there are good prints of the British cut, which runs a full reel longer (about 70") than the Stateside release, worth every minute.
DOUBLE-BILL: Next year, Lukas & Travers would play baddies in Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES/’38.
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