Achtung: Grün

The quintessential 40s British whodunit, Green for Danger satisfies even as it leaves a trail of plot holes that even Alistair Sims' rather self-satisfied Inspector Cockrill would have spotted. Perhaps it satisfies despite its flaws because it embodies all the good things about British films back then. The writers assume a level of intelligence on the part of their viewers and possession of an attention span that would seem unattainable to many of today's MTV generation. Time is taken to develop characters and establish relationships instead of telling the audience everything about a character that is necessary only for the purpose of driving the plot along.

Alistair Sim, sporting a typically smug grin when he's not ducking airplanes, plays Inspector Cockrill, who is called upon to investigate the murder of a postman on the operating table at a quaint hospital full of wooden beams and flagstone floors. He doesn't appear until midway through the film – although his voice can be heard on the narration from the outset – and his dry wit peps things up immeasurably. We are presented with the usual group of suspects: Leo Genn as a vaguely slimy Lothario who wastes no time in pursuing the lovely nurse Fredericka (Sally Gray) the moment she breaks off her engagement to a young Trevor Howard; buxom Megs Jenkins, a matronly figure even then although she was still in her twenties, and a nurse who borders on the edge of hysteria nearly all the time. They were all present at an operation in which poor old Moore Marriott was pumped full of Co2, and are all, therefore, suspected of his murder.

The film keeps you guessing throughout – knowing very little about the film before I watched it, I couldn't even figure out who the second victim was going to be for a while: the plot seemed to be setting up one character for the fall before turning the spotlight on someone else entirely. A couple of red herrings throw you off the trail quite nicely, and Inspector Cockrill's confidence proves to be monumentally misplaced. The twist at the end is truly sublime, and the look on Alistair Sim's face when all becomes clear is one of those cinematic moments that live long in the memory. It's all very quaint and old-fashioned now, but it still provides some solid entertainment.

The British film industry has had a chequered history, but was arguably at its finest in the 40's and 50's when it produced little gems like this.

Straightforwardly plotted convergent mysteries of this genre, with or without a major twist, never fail to give simple satisfaction when acted by such a cast of stalwarts and regular journeypersons as we find here. Some may find the stiff upper lips and well modulated tones of the middle classes a little grating for modern tastes, where nurses all speak naicely and ordinary folk are played by caricature cockneys. Speaking of stiff upper lips, their very personification Trevor Howard is, of course, in it, playing a surgeon with a cloud over his career. Which is why the whole is leavened by the unique figure of Alastair Sim.

No matter how serious the role he must play, his lugubrious features invariably betray an innate whimsicality, that essence of grown-up-naughty-schoolboy that we find so universally engaging, and which is the world's view of Britishness at its best. He makes it possible to insert a pratfall or quip to lighten the atmosphere without losing it.

Films like this were very easy and cheap to make - minimal locations, scenery munching, explosions or car wrecks. Current film makers might take note of their bang-per-buck in an era when nostalgic baby boomers are making their cinema presence felt again. But where will they find another Alastair Sim?

Although I would not quite go as far as Halliwell in listing "Green For Danger" among my top 100, I have to confess to a certain affection for this rather old-fashioned whodunit of 1946. Made in the days when repertory theatre flourished and railway carriages were full of passengers reading Agatha Christie rather than Harry Potter, it captures the very essence of what my grandchildren now refer to as "the olden days". Although based on a novel by the almost forgotten Christianna Brand, it has many of the hallmarks of a good Christie - murder in a hospital operating theatre, six suspects, second murder of of one of them who claims to know the killer's identity, a near re-enactment of the original crime to trap the murderer. Admittedly the film now shows its age. It is very much a studio bound production with backdrops including a painted village church spire. One actual country lane was used but nothing else as far as I can remember. Launder and Gilliat wrote intelligent scripts and directed and produced competently but their work was no match for what Lean and Reed were producing around the same time. A physical scuffle between the two male suspects has a staginess that would not have got past even an American B-movie director. However there are three features that lift what could have been a third-rate work into the realm of the "special". The first is the plot itself that manages to intrigue to the end - obviously a very good choice from among the innumerable whodunits of the period. The second is how good it is in evoking a very atmospheric period of our history - the near-final stage of the war when we were menaced by those quite terrifying "doodlebugs", the ominous drone of their flight, the sudden silence followed by their dreadful explosion. However for a film like this to work you have to have a really memorable detective of the likes of Poirot or Miss Marple. Alastair Sim's Inspector Cockrill is just such a creation. Sim was one of the great character actors of his time and in "Green For Danger" he never did anything finer. He brought to the role considerable subtlety. When there is no-one around he is a bundle of human weakness and self-doubt, sheltering nervously from a flying bomb, or failing to guess the murderer from a whodunit which provides his bedtime reading. However when on the job he displays a sense of professional competence that at times borders on aggression. Although he makes a serious mistake at one point we are in no doubt that, like Chabrol's Inspector Levardin, he is not a cop to be messed with, but, by letting us into his hidden weaknesses, Launder and Gilliat have given us one of British cinema's most endearing characters.

Green For Danger (and how cheeky is THAT title!) is a bravura example of simplicity in the art of movie making. It's a rural whodunnit set in WWII (it was nearly banned in case it frightened soldiers from going to hospital!) wherein a small group of medical professionals soon discover there is a murderer in their midsts after the homicide of a soldier. Enter a Scotland Yard Inspector (Sim) to tidy up the loose ends and swiftly solve the case - before handing in his resignation!!!

This film, despite its whimsical charm, is replete with fine examples of every film-making ingredient. The acting (though a tad stiff) is dead on the ball; the dialogue is always precise and frequently ingenious (Sim's music hall gag about impurities...); the editing is never less than effective and the direction and cinematography constantly inspired (the mood and lighting for the second murder is awesome). It is clear from this type of gem that the ingredients of cinematic success are not always excessive ones - unless it is an excess of skill and talent; and this film has that in abundance. On top of this it also has the gorgon-eyed brilliance of Alistair Sim: a man late to his profession but BOY did he make up for it! Check out his delivery in this film and his constantly out-of-kilter (and surely spontaneous) body language. He is an actor relishing being the fulcrum of every scene he's in - and even those he isn't: The night-time scene in the woods being a perfect example of his equal gift for comedy and scene stealing. And he still makes me laugh out loud!

Directed and produced by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, the British mystery-comedy Green for Danger is a rare treat. Featuring the incomparable Alastair Sim as Cockrill, a bumbling Scotland Yard detective and the redoubtable Trevor Howard as a suspicious doctor, the plot is a convoluted murder mystery in which five people have motive and means to commit murder -- but whodunit?

Set in a rural British hospital (that looks like an Elizabethan mansion) during the latter stages of World War II, two people are murdered before you can say "buzz bomb". The first suspicious death occurs when a postman suddenly dies on the operating table after receiving an anaesthetic. This is soon followed by the death of Nurse Marion Bates (Judy Campbell) after she announces at a party that she has found evidence to expose the killer. The possible killer includes the uptight Dr. Barnes (Trevor Howard), the emotionally unstable Nurse Sanson (Rosamund John), Nurse Woods (Megs Jenkins), Nurse Linley (Sally Gray), the object of affection from both doctors, and the philandering surgeon, Mr. Eden (Leo Genn). Each one of the suspects looks and acts guilty.

There are many twists and turns and, without giving anything away, a staged mock operation after an attempted third murder ultimately will tell the tale. But the film belongs to Alastair Sim. The word whimsical must have been invented with him in mind. You just cannot take things too seriously when he is around. His capricious charm and impudent smile lights up every dark shadow in the old hospital. Green for Danger is a bit stodgy but lots of fun.