Temptation Harbour

For some reason this film has been unseen for more than 30years.Unshown on TV,unreleased on vhs or DVD.I saw it over 30years ago at the BFI South bank.It is a great film,finally now viewable on the BFI player.Great performance from a restrained Robert Newton,atmospheric photography and taut direction.This film deserves a DVD release so that we can watch it whenever we like,not have to wait whilst it is stuck in a vault.

This is a hidden gem of film noir. Not the usual fare of hard-nosed gangsters plugging each other with lead, but a much simpler story of a decent man caught up in the understandable lure of easy money. Robert Newton (Treasure Island) plays a widowed harbor bridge man who lives alone with his adolescent daughter in simple surroundings. He witnesses a murder and tries to rescue the victim. Instead, he dredges up a valise with 5000 pounds; quite a sum in those days. From here there are many unforseen complications, including a very pleasant romance with a circus performer (Simone Simon, who was the original Cat Woman). That would have been more than enough complications for any man, but there are many other forces at play here. The murderer, the police, and a man's conscience. It is interesting to note which of these is the most prominent. Very good viewing.

Robert Newton has been a railroad night signalman, stuck in a box for eight hours a night for twenty years. His wife died three years ago, and he's trying to raise their daughter, Margaret Barton. One night he sees two men get into a fight in the yards, and one of them goes down. Both disappear, but he recovers the suitcase they were fighting over. There are five thousand pounds in small bills in it. He takes it home, determined to take it to the police, but on his way, there are too many temptations: a five-pound smoking pipe.... well, easy enough to stick with his old one, but there are other temptations.

Can decency survive in a Film Noir world? Oh, easy enough for someone like Bogart, I suppose, who's sampled the world and found it wanting, or Robert Mitchum, who can barely open his eyes to see, let alone want. But what is a little man like Robert Newton to do? He seems to be unaware there is anything outside his poor, little world, until he finds his daughter scrubbing floors in a butcher shop, the butcher's wife shouting at her, and he realizes that with this money, she doesn't have to do that. She can have that new dress, they can go to the fair and see Simone Simon, the Atomic Mermaid, and maybe he can have her too....

There's something sleazy and slipshod about the best of British film noir that makes it much more compelling; there's an air of desperation about it, of little men slipping through the cracks that the relative richness of American noir never noticed, outside of a few like Gordon Wiles' THE GANGSTER. With supporting players like William Hartnell and Marcel Dalio, this one has it.

A real downer starring Robert Newton, Simone Simon, Marcel Dalio, and Margaret Barton.

Newton plays a train signalman, Bert Mallison. One night he witnesses a fight between two men, one of whom is pushed into the water. Mallison goes out to try and save him, but only recovers the man's suitcase. It's loaded with money.

Mallison plans on calling the police, but when his boss yells at him, he changes his mind. He goes home and hides it. He doesn't touch the money, but since it's there, he dips into his savings to buy new clothes for his daughter (Barton) and take her to an amusement park.

At the amusement park, they attend the show The Vanishing Mermaid. She is Camelia (Simone Simon) in a bathing suit who is dunked in water and disappears. When Mallison observes her boss being abusive, he runs in to protect her. Later, he runs into her at the pub. She is very kind to Betty, his daughter, who gives her their address.

Unfortunately, Betty is overheard by Brown (Hartnell), the thief who killed the man and wants the suitcase. He is already suspicious of Mallison - after all, he had a birdseye view of the proceedings and seems to be throwing money around.

A French police officer, Dupre (Marcel Dalio) has come to England to recover the money, which is from a casino heist. So he is putting pressure on a desperate Brown.

The situation becomes complicated when Camelia becomes involved and finds out about the money.

This is a very good film, a real noir, the story of a lonely widower trying to be a single dad who sees two glittering baubles - money and a woman - and fights with his conscience so he can have both. Both mean trouble.

Robert Newton is excellent and sympathetic as Mallison, and Barton does a wonderful job as his daughter. The beautiful, seductive Simon is convincing as a cool, ruthless golddigger. All of the acting is very effective.

For a bit of trivia, Margaret Barton, despite looking like a young teen in this film was 21 at the time and often played younger roles due to her size. Born in 1926, she was married to actor Raymond James, for 47 years, until his death. In 2018, at the age of 92, she married again. She and her husband are believed to be Britain's oldest newlyweds.

This is a typical bleak Georges Simenon almost documentary and very "noir" story of very simple and normal people that are cruelly played out by destiny to fatal ordeals. It's a very unusual and different kind of role for Robert Newton, who manages this difficult part with outstanding excellence. Simone Siomon is also remarkably good, while the ruffian William Hartnell brings all the trouble and gets the worst of it. The story is very reminding of "The Man who Watched Trains Go By", and Robert Newton's character is closely related with Claude Rains' in the later film (1952), that was in colour, but this is all in very black and white, and more in black and more dark than light. What embellishes the story is the beautiful music by Mischa Spoliansky, an oasis of comfort in the awful predicaments, and Margaret Barton as the daughter, the only sunshine in the film, but she never stops shining. The story and film is sad but somehow anyway filled with poetry, for the main feeling of the film is a deep human compassion with unwilling victims of the misfortunes of destiny.