Friday the Thirteenth

I recently saw this ancient British film again after a 30 year hiatus.

Luckily it was the recent DVD from NETWORK with possibly the best surviving print that I saw. I won't repeat the complex plot (every reviewer on IMDb seems compelled to reprise film plots for some reason), apart from saying that the narrative binds together a group of disparate characters over a 24 hour period, each with his/her own story, much like the later films TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942) FLESH AND FANTASY (1943) DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) BOND STREET (1948) etc. This film is probably the first talkie to use such a device and its cast is stuffed with famous stars of the early 1930s. Which makes spotting familiar faces (if you are a film buff) part of the fun of watching this.

Its main attraction for me though, is that it offers a tantalizing glimpse of London as it was almost 90 years ago, a London and a way of life in Britain that has vanished completely. The street and railway station scenes, the atmosphere on a typical London bus of that time with a conductor, and the whole ambiance of the film are priceless.

It also provides Max Miller with perhaps his best screen role, allowing him to demonstrate his astonishing facility for rapid-fire dialogue that would not have been out of place at Warner Brothers in the mid 1930s.

Think Pat O'Brien and James Cagney in such films as BOY MEETS GIRL and CEILING ZERO and then watch Max do his stuff. He's terrific and easily competes with them.

Some scenes creak today as one would expect, but for the most part, this is a vivid, highly entertaining little film that deserves to be far better known than it is.

An early connecting lives film, much like a 1930s 'Pulp Fiction' without all the vulgar language and violence, it is very well done in most aspects, and considering when it was made, it is well ahead of its time. The film editing and the acting - especially from Gordon Harker and Robertson Hare - are particularly strong points of the film, and the overall product is engaging the whole time through. Arguably there are at least one too many characters, which complexes the film much more than is necessary, however this hardly subtracts from this very unique and highly interesting, but too often forgotten, early British film.

So many early British sound films that I've seen on video suffer from either poor print transfer quality or poor sound or both. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a copy of this movie on a video of excellent quality, enabling me to focus on the story itself.

And, an excellent story it was. At first sight, the passengers on the ill-fated bus looked like a pretty boring lot (except for the always lovely Jessie Matthews). But, as the film went back to show each passenger's story on the day before the accident, I discovered that the cast, contrary to initial appearance, was a talented group of performers, skillfully directed so as to bring a real individuality to their distinctive characterizations.

Viewers may have different preferences as to which two passengers are going to meet a tragic end and which ones will survive. But, the movie holds your interest as it keeps you guessing. This film deserves a much wider audience - a real gem of early British Cinema.

This movie pops up now and again on the ABC in Australia at about 3 am in the morning.

It starts off with the scene of a bus crash in London.

The films has got flashbacks of each character as the film progresses, plus the lapsed photography of Big Ben winding back, to symbolise what events occurred thirteen hours ago, up until the bus crash.

It took me a while to understand it, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

If Sean Cunningham and Quentin Tarrantino got together and made a film, this may be the result - due to the flashbacks and small stories tying in, and deaths.

I am unsure of the main characters, as it has been a while since I have seen it, but a rare gem indeed.

Despite its age, this film retains its undoubted charm and attraction, and is a fine, surviving example of early British cinema. It has an underlying air of eeriness, interspersed with shafts of humour which are not out of place, and serve to demonstrate the assured direction & production values involved. So many episodic type films are disjointed and untidy, but this is not one of them. The standard of acting helps a great deal, and the various disparate characters come across as interesting and believable. All in all, this long-forgotten little gem is well worth anyone's attention, in spite of the one jarring note in the film which, surprisingly, escaped the censor's attention!