Cottage à louer

A very brisk, lightly entertaining wartime thriller with quite an exciting ensemble cast, the film is however burdened down by a strange, ill-explained plot, which borders both on being contrived and confusing. The characters are also rather run-of-the-mill, but they do interact quite well together. The picture has some interesting ideas, some neat mirror work, and it is generally amusing stuff. Overall nothing too special or highly memorable, but it has enough mystery elements and thriller elements worked into it that it is able to provide adequate entertainment, even if it is not a perfect watch as such.

A wartime evacuee from London arrives in a small Scottish village to stay in Mrs Barrington's cottage. However the arrival of a wounded Spitfire pilot and a mysterious bald gentleman means the boy must stay in the Barrington's house. At the house Mr Barrington and his assistant are working on a top-secret new bombsight to help the war effort. Ronald begins to notice strange behaviour in the village and gradually uncovers a plot to steal the bomb sight when it is developed.

This is a typically jaunty British wartime adventure which contains some gentle laughs and a quite good `who-done-it' style plot. Our eyes come in the form of cockney scamp Ronald as he notices some strange going on. The film manages to keep the mystery going by giving each character shadowy motives - we're not sure if they are a spy, a policeman, a rogue after the ladies, a scorned lover or what - but they all seem to have something going on. This makes it more enjoyable that it sounds and it isn't until the final 20 minutes when it all starts to come together. The famous cast makes it enjoyable - surely none of them could be the spy!?

George Cole shows his lifetime career in a good performance as a cheeky cockney scamp. Mills enjoys himself in his usual war hero role. Leslie Banks plays it straight as the inventor Mr Barrington, while Alistair Sim has the most fun in his shadowy role (he would later work with Cole as an adult on the St Trinians series). The only other role that stands out is De Casalis as the dippy Mrs Barrington, she gives plenty of gentle laughs.

Overall a gentle wartime adventure that has plenty of mystery and nice touches to keep you interested.

A clever boy evacuee (played by a very young but ever cunning George Cole) from London arrives in a Scottish village to stay in the house of the Barringtons, she a socialite, he a British scientist developing a bomb.

Be warned: there are quick twists and surprises in this cloak and dagger spy thriller!

It also carries far more action than I would expect in an Anthony Asquith-directed flick. Photography is competent in spite of war-prompted shortages and restrictions. Despite the good humor and likeable characters, the exciting script reminds us all of how suspicious everyone was - and had to be - of everybody else at that time.

Good acting from Cole, Sim and Mills. Carla Lehmann is gorgeous.

Riveting war adventure - definitely worth watching!

Two bad-guy Nazi guards with guns return to the entry room of a mill where Banks, Cole and the Scotland Yard detective/butler are being held in the inner room. Check. It's all over for these two Nazi agents. The handwriting is on the mill wall. Militia is outside, surrounding them, shooting through the windows. The baddies' gun ammunition is likely low, as they've been shooting a lot. I didn't notice they brought extra rounds. Check.

Problem solving is no longer necessary for our hostage three. They clearly heard the rescuing ruckus. All they have to do is bide their time and enjoy their rescue. They don't have to bother to fulfill any escape plan.

But no, here comes their superfluous special effect. A large, heavy millstone is lever-ready to come crashing through the door connecting the inner room to the mill entry. Only it's narrower than about a third of a man's body, and quite unlikely to remain upright for more than a foot length of travel if levered and pushed. Makes you wonder how this point was staged in the play format this film was based on.

Now if you were a Nazi/bad guy, would you stand around huddled next to your pal in perfect line with the approaching stone, or would you have good enough reflexes to just hop aside? A second or two of warning is all you'd need to get out of the way, as the stone improbably lumbers along its slow, inexplicably upright gravitational path. The baddies stare at it and get in line for the impact.

Well this film still gets 9 stars from me out of 10, mainly for the entertaining interplay between comedy and intrigue, and for the excellent cast and script, and overall sweetness, despite credulity-bending here and there. Enjoyable movie for a rainy afternoon.

Cottage to Let (1941)

There are so many characters, so many tinges of British accent, and such a parade of turncoats and double agents it's difficult to quite follow everything here. But stick it out. Or, in the extreme case (which I admit taking) see it twice. It's "quite worth it, I dare say."

A comedy on the surface, and quite funny all through, it's also a serious war movie, shot and released in the thick of World War II. The key theme is actually not the bomb sight design and the attempt by the government to protect its secret from spies. It's about loose lips. And looking for traitors among us.

So, here at this cottage near where a top scientist is working on a secret weapon idea, there is a parade of suspicious characters, and I mean characters, including the redoubtable Alastair Sim. There is a nutty family running the place, a couple of love affairs in the air, a bunch of secret messages sent by various messengers. I count rough twelve characters who matter, and if some are very minor, they are critical in some small way to the outcome. Allegiances are everything.

What makes the movie actually remarkable is that it holds to together so well. And it has a tight economy to the editing, and a fluidity to the filming, that keeps it really going. For some reason the lighting in the first half, and the interior scenes in general, is bright and flat (no Warner Bros. influence here I guess) but then there are some scenes later that are extraordinary in their dramatic atmosphere.

In fact, there are some ideas that prefigure famous later ones, like the auction that is interrupted by spies and good guys by bidding incorrectly, stolen by Hitchcock in "North by Northwest." Or even the ending which is a slim version of the mirror shootout by Welles in "Lady from Shanghai." It's quite an exciting finish (never mind the goofy millstone moment, which you'll see).

Anthony Asquith, the director, went on to make some mainstays of post-war British cinema, and that's yet another reason to appreciate this, as a precursor to his own work. But it also reveals a real intelligence for the movies. Evident and appreciated.

In the big view, it isn't the plot, which is necessarily contrived to give a message to the nation, but the many pieces, and the writing and acting in those pieces, that make the movie really strong. The one version out there (streaming on Netflix) is a weak print (and there is no DVD release, apparently) so the sound and even the richness of the visuals will hamper a good appreciation. Even so, give it a look. Alertly.