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First released in 1951, this endlessly entertaining film is an absorbing tale of an American arriving in postwar Britain looking for answers about his slain younger brother

This 1951 drama-thriller from director Jacques Tourneur and veteran genre writer Philip MacDonald, which sees Ray Milland coming to grimy postwar Britain demanding answers about his brother’s death, is a gem: focused, fast-moving and a little eccentric. It is a British-set movie that takes us on a travelogue tour from the coast of Tampa, Florida, to London – and from there to Wales, the Scottish Highlands and Birmingham. There is a lovely scene shot on location in London’s Covent Garden, in the days of the fruit and veg market, with crowds of real people looking on.

There are no explicit action sequences: no shootouts, not even a punch-up. But it’s entirely absorbing with an undertow of mystery and tension, a mix of humour...

3/4This year at the Locarno Festival I am looking for specific images, moments, techniques, qualities or scenes from films across the 70th edition's selection that grabbed me and have lingered past and beyond the next movie seen, whose characters, story and images have already begun to overwrite those that came just before.***A girl on the verge of womanhood practicing piano in the living room of her instructor in Ilian Metev’s ¾ (Filmmakers of the Present). It hardly matters if actress Mila Mikhova is actually playing the piano or not in Metev’s loose, gently improvising Bulgarian drama of a three-member family—adolescent boy, teen sister and their father—each on the cusp of a new movement in their lives. We see her face pursed but pretty, concentrating hard, deep in her attempt, frustrated at her limitations, and embarrassed by her perceived faults. The music flows and halts, the kindly...