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A panning long-shot gives the Dartmoor penitentiary in the opening credits, birds glimpsed through bars trigger the prisoner's memory. The former RAF pilot (Rex Harrison) is in his element up in the air or at the races, the fateful turn is a mere chat with a disgruntled demimondaine (Betty Ann Davies) on a Hyde Park bench at dusk, "original sin" is the topic. A copper is dead by accident a few moments later, "the verdict reached by the jury is unjust because you cannot try bad luck." Fog shrouds the breakout, the Scotland Yard inspector (William Hartnell) grows philosophical while on pursuit: "Who was it that said a prison is a monastery of men who have not chosen to be monks?" Joseph L. Mankiewicz on location with a case on different forms of captivity and flight, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and The 39 Steps are the models. The protagonist locks eyes with the lass (Peggy Cummins) while hiding during a foxhunt, they next cross paths as he stumbles into her manor and helps himself to her breakfast. (Her reason for getting engaged is a practical one: "I'm tired of being poor.") Down with the plane, out of a moving truck and into a nightmarish marsh, possibly the most visceral passage from this literary filmmaker—a dolorous physicality to unsettle the Harrison urbanity. Cyril Cusack's concision as a timorous Judas is typical of the tightly-inwoven structure, Norman Woodland as the Minister adduces a note from Les Misérables. The conformist finale can't soothe the preceding anger. "My opinion is there are great many people in prison that should be out and great many out that should be in." With Peter Croft, Stuart Lindsell, Jill Esmond, Frederick Piper, Marjorie Rhodes, John Slater, Michael Golden, and Frederick Leister. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |