Portrait of Alison

This is a typical Durbridge thriller with a labyrinthine plot which is filled with bodies and a whole shoal of red herrings.A good cast of reliable character actors.

Robert Beatty is an artist who learns that his brother has been killed in a Italian car accident. As you'd expect, that's just the start of it - the mystery revolves around a postcard featuring a glass of Chianti being held in a woman's hand... Who has it? What does it mean? Is it a clue to the mysterious death? This is a far more layered thriller than you'd expect - the performances are taut and the dialogue less meandering than in many other UK-made dramas of the time. Geoffrey Keen is good as the sceptical police inspector and although you do get the gist well before the end, it's still quite a suspensefully directed (by Guy Green) 80 minutes.

This British film from 1955 stars Robert Beatty, Terry Moore, and William Sylvester.

Commercial artist Tim Forrester (Beatty) is visited by his brother (Sylvester) and learns that a third brother was killed in a car accident in Italy. A young actress, Alison Ford, was with him and she, too, died.

The police seem to be looking for a postcard they believe the dead brother sent to Tim - a drawing of a chianti bottle with a woman's hand holding it, but Tim doesn't have it.

The father of the dead Alison commissions him to paint her portrait and gives Tim a photo of her and the dress she wore in the photo. When he returns home one night, the painting has been ruined and one of his models (Josephine Griffin) is dead in the bedroom, wearing the dress from the portrait. He now is a suspect in her murder. Then Alison Ford shows up, not dead at all.

The premise is Laura-esque as far as the portrait and the dead woman not being dead, but the similarity ends there. The plot concerns international smuggling, and the postcard is very important as police search for the mysterious head of the ring, Nightingale.

The cast has British, Canadian, and American actors in it. It's a bit strange because one of the brothers has a British accent and the other doesn't. Terry Moore is very young and pretty here, and the overall acting is good.

Though this is a British film, the outside influences make it seem more American than most of these movies.

The film opens with a fiery car crash off an embankment in Italy and the brother of Robert Beatty and William Sylvester is killed. But not before he dashed off some postcards to several folks including the brothers. One of those postcards has some coded information concerning the crooked dealings he's involved with.

Having Sylvester be a pilot gives half the plot away because you know he's going to be involved. But the question is who is the ringleader of a smuggling operation?

Terry Moore was supposed to have been killed with the brother in the crash. But she shows up in London and is then a target for the bad guys. She's also a subject for Beatty who is a portrait painter.

Portrait Of Alison is a nice and tight British noir film. Starts off slow, but picks up quite nicely a quarter of the way through.

Love how Britishers Beatty and Sylvester talk like Americans or at least how they conceive what Americans sound like.

As I watched this I kept thinking it reminded me of something Frances Durbridge would write, no mention of his name in the credits, but low and behold, he's the writer. Typical of his work, use of photographs, mistaken identity, and of course the clever sense of misdirection his work was well known for.

The film opens with a very dramatic scene, that car going over the edge grabs your attention, and so begins a web of intrigue and suspense. It's very well acted, cleverly written and well paced, on the downside there are some dodgy fight scenes and a horrid, syrupy ending which had no place in this film.

The same year a TV series was made, featuring Patrick Barr and Lockwood West, sadly it's missing from the archives. If I'm honest I would think this story would be better suited to a six part TV series, with the deep plot and twists allowed to develop a little slower, less forced.

Good, I enjoyed it. 7/10