Meurtre à l'aube

This movie was excellently directed and acted, almost flawlessly so. Yet the plot lost focus along the way and created too many ambiguities.

Sally Gray was the primary interest in the film. Though compared to Ginger Rogers, she was more like Veronica Lake. Indeed, at the end she actually appears with her hair in a peek-a-boo style. She looked stunningly beautiful in the film throughout but also gave a superb performance.

The problem is it's hard to justify why she would stay with her husband/partner who showed almost no virtues throughout the film. To make a relationship like that work, the husband should have been written as loving for the most part with a little flaw of temperament. As it is it's hard to see what someone like Vivienne (Gray) could see in him, especially since he seems much older than her and is not especially good-looking. It's true she admires his illusionist artistry, but that's hardly enough to keep a woman attached to a man.

Also puzzling is the man-wife relationship of Michael Redgrave (Peter) and his wife, Pat, played by Patricia Roc. Their relationship is barely touched upon and seems out of place in the film. Moreover, the film apparently sees no problem in Peter's obsession with Vivienne, which actually amounts to adultery (he kisses her passionately) though they have no sex in the film. The failure of the film is it doesn't even address the implications of Peter's double romantic life as if it were of no consequence. Keep in mind the year the film was made, which makes Peter's potentially adulterous affair even more puzzling. Did audiences of the time care?

I also found the brusque ending a letdown. It's an ending that might work in a half-hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, but not in a feature-length movie where we develop an affection for the leading lady.

Finally the subplot regarding Pat's telephone job seems too episodic with the rest of the film.

But one can cast all that aside and enjoy the stunning beauty of Sally Gray, the fine direction, acting, and editing throughout and even some illusionist episodes,

Michael Redgrave is on the train to his job as a crane operator. He sees at a window Paul Lukas killing Sally Gray.

It's a great start for a movie, and it was used before. LADY IN DISTRESS is a remake of the French METROPOLITAIN. I'd like to offer you a comparison of the two movies, but I've never seen the earlier film. I do know that Michael Redgrave is miscast as a working stiff who rides around in taxicabs. Sally Gray, on the other hand, impresses me as more than eye candy with a sullen expression for the first time. She's very good as the unwilling femme fatale who drives her husband, stage magician Lukas, crazy with jealousy, talent manager Hartley Power, sad with hopelessness and Redgrave mad with the possibilities of a magical night.

There are many early noir elements in this movie, filled, as it is, with Gallic fatalism, and can be viewed as an important step in its evolution. It's just not a film noir in itself.

Herbert Mason's lustily performed, enjoyably light-hearted romantic thriller 'A Window in London' still retains its effervescence, being a vibrantly written, engagingly brisk, warmly nostalgic cinematic treat! This frequently refined vintage entertainment documents some truly evocative moments along with its beguilingly monochrome views of 1940s London! And certainly no less appetising is the vivacious, and disarmingly pretty Sally Gray who makes for an especially charming, drop-dead gorgeous heroine! With her crisply moustachioed, monstrously arrogant, ferociously jealous illusionist hubby brought to meticulous life by Paul Lukas, who energetically portrays the picture-perfect pantomime villain Louis Zoltini with a deft Lugosian panache! Far from primitive, Mason's pristine 'A Window in London' is not only a fascinating window into a bygone Britain, it also maintains lively interest as a pleasingly whimsical, sweetly romantic, deliciously theatrical romp in its own right, and while the tall, almost absurdly photogenic Michael Redgrave is, perhaps, a trifle miscast as the cavalier, rough-handed cockney crane driver, he nonetheless remains a sympathetic lead, whose gallantly dramatic intervention playfully heralds an eventful jaunt across the picturesque diorama of 1940s London.

You probably don't believe that an obscure English film from 1940 that you've never heard of directed by nobody you've heard of is worth watching. I didn't either until I saw this - what a surprise, it's great!

Let me qualify that 'great.' If you enjoy a good old fashioned gritty, film noir drenched in melodrama without any mushy sentimentality, you'll love this. All the characters are superbly realised with genuine personalities and back stories - they just seem so believable. You can engage with them all and empathise with their tangled and toxic relationships.

Nobody is particularly fun but Michael Redgrave (wearing a flat cap to make him working class!) is constantly cheerful, oblivious to the mayhem he's causing. He's a rather imperfect husband with a pretty wife who becomes infatuated with the wife of a third rate magician. She is played by Sally Gray who is so drop dead gorgeous it's quite understandable. Her husband is Paula Lukas and he's brilliantly over the top as paranoid, insecure utter failure as a magician, husband and man. I'd go as far as saying that this is one of his best roles.

Director Herbert Mason, hardly a well known name, doesn't have any particular style or tricks but succeeds completely in making this totally engrossing. His story was a tried and tested one as this is an English remake of a French film made a year earlier so he had the advantage of knowing the story worked. He really brings his talented cast to life. Lucas and Redgrave are excellent as you'd expect but so is Sally Gray. Whilst she's absolutely stunning, she's also a superb actress.

Although it's very English it has an almost similar feel to those gritty Warner Brothers pre-code movies but with the benefit of a decade's worth of technological advances in filmmaking. Its lack of sugar coating and sentimentality is also refreshing and the likeability of its imperfect characters makes this sublimely entertaining.

Crane operator Michael Redgrave (Peter) works on the construction of Waterloo Bridge during the day whilst his wife Patricia Roc (Pat) is a telephone operator on the nightshift. They only have one day when they actually see each other. Sounds like a perfect relationship. Anyway, they want to ruin this balance by spending more time with each other and the ideal would be for Roc to get a day job. One day Redgrave witnesses a man murdering a woman outside an apartment whilst he is travelling on the train to work and he goes to the apartment to investigate. This is when we are introduced to illusionist Paul Lukas (Zoltini) and his assistant Sally Gray (Vivian). These encounters are life changing for all involved.

The idea is a good one although it stretches belief and we follow a love triangle or 2 or 3 - Sally Gray seems to be popular with the fellas - and the film follows Redgrave on quite an eventful night when he attends a music hall performance. Blimey!

For those who are familiar with Redgrave's ventriloquist act from "Dead of Night" (1945), given that we enter the music hall/theatre environment you will excitedly will him on to produce his dummy and show everyone a true spooky act. However, he stays away from any such performance, preferring instead to give us a rendition of a stupid song at a late-night party - "Let's all sing like the birdies sing, tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet".

You won't expect the ending and it is a dark twist when set alongside the words uttered as the final line of dialogue. It makes it a good film and wraps things up nicely - ha ha!