Recherché pour meurtre

It's all very nicely done. I had barely, if ever, heard of any of the leads in this movie before I saw it. I was expecting a sloppy film noir set in London, but it was a pleasant surprise when the dialogue and the players were as good as they are. The story is tight, mostly, and there is real tension and unexpected humor. Overall, it was very effective.

I was particularly impressed with Eric Portman as Colebrooke. There was not much of a tradition playing sociopaths at this point in the movies. Of the few that had been portrayed, Cagney in "White Heat", for example, is much more histrionic and obvious than Portman is here.

I might quibble with some plot points and some really heavy-handed staging, but really this is much like middle Hitchcock without all of the psychological mumbo-jumbo to push it along.

Erudite British effort where the strangler comes off as quite civilized. He's quite the gentleman, really, just has this problem with his hands.

Really enjoyed Stanley Holloway as the #2-cop on the case. Stanley doesn't break into song but he does provide some comedic relief--subtle stuff, no slapstick.

You can't help but be fascinated by the many views of London that are pictured (immediately after the war). The buses, street scenes, and various landmarks shown on film tell a story of their own. How times have changed--the record shop scene is a far cry from the rocking London that would follow 20 years later.

This is well-written (Emeric Pressburger had a hand in that) story with characters that are decidely human, albeit in the English stiff-upper-lip school.

This is like a Dostyevsky thriller, you know the murderer from the start, and you have the privilege of together with the script writer gradually intersecting him piece by piece, to get into the very heart of the matter of his complex psychology. Like Raskolnikov, he almost begs to get found out and be delivered, Eric Portman makes a fantastic performance by never sparing the poor murderer his tribulations, who can't help being what he is, he can't explain it and understand it either, and he even prays to God to be set free. The explanations of the malaise "being in the blood" is poor and does not hold. And then there are all the other persons getting involved, his poor mother above all, who never suspects her son to be as affected as his father until it is too late, and his girls, all innocents and suspecting nothing, and then the marvellous police officers, the meticulously methodical Roland Culver deliberately beating about the bush until he at last has evidence, and Stanley Holloway as his second, dutiful to the last. There are others also and precious details, the case about the cigar, the spectacular scenes at the fair and Hyde Park, and the towering thriller of the final settlement, almost reminding of "The Third Man" although being out in the open and in broad daylight. You feel the keen pen of Emeric Pressburger here in almost every detail, the famous partner of Michael Powell, who was the script writer of them and one of the best in film history. To all this comes the haunting melody of Mischa Spoliansky, a Russian composer who had to escape from Russia to Germany to later make his career in England with various film scores, but this could be his very best: actually reminding of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's "Capriccio Diabolico" from 1935, expertly performed by Andrès Segovia among others. In brief, this very noir British thriller contains everything you could wish for, while the almost Dostoyeskian psychology is its major treat.

Eric Portman (Viktor) is the grandson of a notorious hangman. His grandfather's sadistic, psychotic reputation as a killer plays heavily on Portman's psyche. Actually, it does more than that - it influences his behaviour. However, he is unable to change who he is. A serial killer is at large murdering women and goading the police. Can Roland Culver (Inspector Conway) and his team prevent the killer from striking again and again....?

This film contains some dodgy accents, in particular, a very posh bus driver as played by Derek Farr (Jack) and a young Scottish woman, Jenny Laird (Jeannie), who comes from absolutely nowhere in Scotland. There are humorous moments eg, Stanley Holloway's portrayal of "Sgt Sullivan" and Gerard Kempinski as a waiter, alongside tense dramatic sections, eg, the murder of Jenny Laird (Jeannie) in the park. I found Barbara Everest as "Mrs Colebrooke" slightly weird b t it's a minor point in an otherwise convincing tale of a killer who is born to kill. We are left in no doubt as to who the killer is from the beginning and this adds to the tension throughout the film. I thought that the killer's fate was rather convenient - an easy way to end the film - but it's still a good film.

This is not a whodunit for one knows the identity of the killer ;it's more psychological drama,and some of its aspects somewhat predate works like Hitchcock 's "strangers on a train "(1951): the mother is omnipresent in the miserable murderer 's life,and in his house ,he only sees women such as his auntie and the servant ;although she notices he's always gone at night , the mother seems to want to ignore what might lay beneath : she knows the family has a history of family of mental illness,but she tries to reassure herself by saying he takes after her and soon he'll find the right girl and settle down .But isn't it already too late? The scene in the museum means a lot: he does need someone to lean on , but by introducing the right girl from the first sequence , the screenwriter (Powell's collaborator, Pressburger) creates a blind alley at the same time : the nice bus conductor.

Other similarities with Hitchcock's 1951 thriller:the fascination for amusement parks ,the final sequence in the island (which appears earlier in "stranger on a train" ). Both murderer are well respected men .

With his aristocratic look,his refined manners , Eric Portman gives a restrained performance but behind the mask,he conceals an intense suffering ; he may show infinite tenderness when he holds the girl in his arms ,and the murder is almost unexpected (directing avoids horror and treats the sequence in a stunning way)