Chain of Events

One thing leads to another might be an apt description of this film. Bank clerk, bus stop, trolley bus, magistrates court, newspaper reporter, blackmail, and so on, eventually ending up at the bus stop again. Nice to see all those old favourite actors again. Incidentally the music used in the opening and closing credits is 'Automation' by Dutch composer Hugo de Groot which was also used in the 1950s BBC TV police series 'Fabian of the Yard'.

Splendid film showing how a small action by one person can cause huge consequences to others, the butterfly effect basically.

Besides the plots, what is most enjoyable in British films of this period is trying to recognise the locations and seeing the wonderful old vehicles used. This, together with spotting the character actors especially those uncredited, makes for a thoroughly entertaining hour or two. This is an entertaining film with good cast and well paced. Susan Shaw always looks stunning and it is sad that the death of her husband caused her to drink and subsequently die at an early age. Freddie Mills is always good value but also had a tragic end in real life.

Filmed mainly around Uxbridge High Street, Windsor Street and Tube Station together with some footage of Station Parade, Beaconsfield and Hyde Park Place, it is fascinating to see how places have changed over the years. This is not always for the best.

The vehicles involved include a rather nice Bentley R Type, Drop Head Coupe which is still extant albeit with new paintwork, a Hillman Husky which probably rusted away completely very quickly as that model was prone to do and a wonderful Standard Flying 14 which I would love to have owned.

Altogether well worth watching.

When you throw a pebble into a still pond, you'll watch that calmness interrupted as the ripples flow out, growing as they move out. This film works in the exact same way, the moment that clerk does the tiniest thing, not paying for his bus ticket, things spiral out of control, getting worse and worse.

I loved it, I thought it was clever, original, amusing, and a definite warning, 'always pay for your train and bus tickets,' had he done so, would any of the unfortunate events have occurred, who knows.

The acting was terrific, Dermot Walsh, Jack Watling and Susan Shaw in particular, and of course a wonderfully humorous turn from the wonderful Joan Hickson as the Barmaid.

Overall, I would class this fifties film as excellent. 9/10

This is a very good fifties ensemble drama directed by Gerald Thomas, which shows how tiny events can lead to a series of larger ones culminating in catastrophes. (And this was decades before the urban legend of the butterfly flapping its wings in South America arose.) The acting is excellent, and it is sad to think that this was the last time that the lovely Susan Shaw appeared in a film (aged 29) before her husband died in an accident and she went to pieces. Although she appeared in a few things after that, she entered a terminal depression, turned to drink, and died at 49. And yet here she is, all fresh and jolly with her life still in front of her. So that is a further irony associated with this film, which is a sardonic threnody to the interventions of tragic irony in our lives. Tes film positively reeks of the fifties, and anyone who wonders what English daily life was like then can see the whole panoply of it laid out here, down to the last teacup. What the men were like then, what the women were like then, seems as distant now as the dinosaurs. And although the entire story hinges upon a London bus conductor, there are none left today. They are greatly missed by all who remember them, with their wisecracks, cranky folk wisdom and observations about the weather, and their odd and amusing personalities. They could not exist today in our relentless world of 'elf and safety and dour 'political correctness'. In this story we see just how dangerous it was to go out with insufficient change for a bus fare, and how one really diced with fate by being so foolhardy as to insult a bus conductor's integrity in front of his inspector. As for the stuffy bank clerks, and their finicky ways back then, one misses them far less. They could be so tiresome and irritating that if they were still around, they would be enough to drive one to the despondent option of that otherwise unthinkable madness, 'online banking', or 'hacker's paradise' as I prefer to call it. This entertaining film is very well worth seeing, and is a solid social history lesson as well.

If producer Peter Rogers hadn't already just used it for one of the thrillers he and director Gerald Thomas made before they hit paydirt with the 'Carry Ons' (at least three actors who featured in the early 'Carry Ons' - Frank Forsyth, Cyril Chamberlain & Anthony Sagar - appear within the first ten minutes of this film), 'The Vicious Circle' would have been a more suitable title for this diverting little drama which resembles a less bleak version of 'On the Night of the Fire' and 'Very Bad Things', in which events spiral outwards in unforeseen ways like ripples rather than form a simple chain.

Although buses no longer have conductors, a remarkable amount of the film has proved remarkably unchanged, notably the arguments that still break out when someone hasn't paid their fare on a bus, and the amoral opportunism of tabloid journalists when they sniff a juicy story...