The Vicious Circle

The film is a remake of a 1956 BBC serial called'My Friend Charles',& as such gallops thru the material in a relatively short time.I found it fast moving,enjoyable & unpretentious.Did anyone else notice the scenes,towards the end,where John Mills was being gassed?-the producers obviously decided to omit the scenes-maybe censorship?,but notice when he's sat by the window of the flat,deep breathing closely followed by similar scenes with the car window open. The Francis Durbridge serials all seemed to inhabit the same universe,that of unexplained happenings,people being not what they seem & the villain being someone close to the hero/victim.A predictable universe in some ways,but one with its own rules & regulations.

When Dr Latimer ( John Mills ) is asked by a friend ,to pick up a German actress, from London airport, and take her to her hotel, he agrees,later when he returns to his flat he finds the body of the murdered actress. This leads Mills into a world of blackmail, murder and a fake passport scam John Mills gives his usual solid performance, and other British stalwarts Derek Farr,Wilfred Hyde-White, Lionel Jeffries and Ronald Culver, make this film well worth watching.

An early film from Gerald Thomas, who would later go on to dedicate his career to the Carry On comedy series, this is a very different sort of film. It is a mystery film, and in many ways archetypal, with a web of different events that an innocent man has to work his way through. It is not a brilliant film, especially in comparison to the very best of its genre that was being churned out at the time, but it does the job fairly well, with an intriguing enough plot and good application of music. It is complicated beyond credibility, and the film does not have the power to suspend one's disbelief, however a competent cast working with a competent director find a way to make it work as a satisfying watch.

This is the perfect comfort film (and I don't mean Lance Comfort). You've rung in sick, it's raining outside, you've got a big piece of buttered toast ready and then this comes on afternoon telly. Except it doesn't anymore; it's all Jeremy Kyle and his irksome ilk: "I married my lesbian dad."

Anyway, The Vicious Circle stars good old dependable Johnny Mills pants as a doctor caught up in a – erm – vicious circle. It's one of those innocent man gets tangled up in something nasty but he doesn't know who to believe and he ends up questioning his own sanity. Commonplace everyday events become loaded with meaning – or else take on a whole new meaning: a man, Lionel Jeffries, claiming to be a reporter, isn't a reporter and can't be traced; a disembodied voice on the telephone, claiming to be a film director friend, is an impersonator. In the most effective moment of the film Mills returns to his friend's flat (Derek Farr) to find a party in full swing – except it's only a gramophone record of party noise playing in an empty apartment. Oh and there's also a neurotic female patient who says she found a dead body with a candlestick next to it while strolling on the common (the police find the candlestick in Mills' golf clubs.) The building blocks of civilised society – trust and taking things at face value – become eroded and all we are left with is paranoia and fear. Not that you'd know it to look at Mills. It's a stiff upper lip and a nice round of golf all the way. It's how they did things back then, you know.

The problem the film has is that it asks us to trust Mills (would you trust a man who wears a cravat under his polo top?) and so we never doubt Mills' innocence. After the police reveal that they believe him too the suspense drains out of things and we're only left with the question of who's behind it all and why.

I found this a good, solid little mystery that could probably have been somewhat better had more imaginative forces been brought to bear on the story and filming. The one thing that is pretty much perfect about it is the acting, with just about everybody in it performing at peak efficiency when considering what they've got to work with. A couple of reviewers found John Mills a bit too straight or severe in his character's acceptance of the very strange things that are happening in his world, one remarking that Cary Grant did this kind of thing better for Hitchcock because Grant is an Everyman and Mills is not. I would have reversed that in a nanosecond. Until the Tom Courtenays of the world came along, Mills was about as much of an Everyman as the British Cinema could produce, and anybody who thinks of Cary Grant as an Everyman has a very elevated opinion of Man! Anyway, the Ambleresque premise and happenings in this film might have been better managed by Agatha Christie, who would at least have provided a better denouement than we get here. The one given here is pretty acceptable, but in no way special. Still, it makes sense, and that is as much as we can expect from most mystery stories. The film does hold the attention, because although we know that Mills is the victim of some nefarious plot (mainly because we are always with him and learn of each succeeding mysterious element at the same time as he does), the puzzle that is set up is really quite bizarre and we can't imagine how it will be explained away. It is, and acceptably so, but Christie would have had our jaws dropping as explanations poured forth. The film is held up and made excellent by the quality of the acting. There are no weak links in that regard, and Mills is supported admirably by Derek Farr, Roland Culver, Mervyn Johns, Lionel Jeffries and Wilfred Hyde-White (especially by the latter), and on the distaff side, just as excellently by Noelle Middleton as his fiancée and the always-admirable Rene Ray as a mysterious and somewhat duplicitous woman involved in causing Mills's problems. I might add that I was previously unfamiliar with Ms. Middleton, and she seemed to me totally first-rate, beautiful and downright classy throughout. I really must see more of her. (Ah, how I miss the 1950s!) Anyway, a solid Mills effort, and if not as excellent as some of his other films, that may just be an over-critical evaluation based on the extraordinary excellence of the film work he gave us over some 70 years of practicing his craft!