The Gilded Cage

Quite an unremarkable crime caper that sees the theft of a valuable portrait - quite a smudged one at that - of an un-named woman. Poor old "Harry" (Michael Alexander) is front and centre on the suspects list, but luckily his beefcake brother "Steve" (Alex Nicol) arrives from the US just in time to look into these shenanigans. Any art historian would have conniptions at the manner in which this supposedly priceless work of art is handled - especially at the end when the cunning deception is cleverly exposed. What budget there was went on Nicol's air fare - the rest of the thing is seriously basic with pretty banal dialogue and though the principle of the conclusion is quite quirky, the execution is a bit shoddy. By no means the worst film ever made by John Gilling, but it's twenty minutes too long and the love interest from a very matronly looking Veronica Hurst ("Marcia") just clutters up the pace.

The cool title is a bit wasted here, since it applies to a stolen portrait (as usual handled rather roughly during the course of the film despite it's supposedly great value) rather than, say, a night club (as in Ealing Studios' 'Cage of Gold' a few years earlier).

There are nice views of locations in London and along the Thames. Clifford Evans and Elwyn Brooke-Jones are given a moustache and a beard to make them look creepier. Veronica Hurst and Ursula Howells are both glamorous in that severe, buttoned-down way characteristic of the female leads in fifties British 'B' pictures.

Alex Nicol comes to visit his brother, Michael Alexander in Great Britain. After a brief reunion, his brother has to work that evening, so Nicol goes to a night club to meet with some of his brother's friends. He escorts Ursula Howells home, leaves, then realizes he has her handbag. When he returns to her apartment, she's dead. Who did it, and what has a painting called "The Gilded Cage" got to do with it?

It's an all right movie, with Nicol running around anonymous sets and nearly anonymous streets. When it comes to the mystery itself, there's an awful lot of fluff in the film.

Nicol had had a contract at Universal, but it was leading him nowhere, so he packed his bags and headed to Great Britain, where producers might feel that having an American in the leading role would offer entree to American screens. Nicol also started to direct. He died in 2001, age 85.

That was one of the few John Gilling's films that still miss in my collection. The other which I don't have ones are probably comedies or features that I search not very hard. I saw all his horror, adventure and crime movies. This one is not the best ever directed by him. Pure routine crime flick, with an American fly-boy - military guy - played by Alex Nicol who tries to find a murderer...

Nearly a sleepy story for me who likes unusual tales, or action packed ones in replacement of a certain originality. Not a bad movie either. But lost in an ocean of billions of ones very like. Just a rare film from a famous UK director, who would deserve to be shown more often in film libraries all over the world. I found many good features among those he made: MAN INSIDE, TIGER BY THE TAIL, VOICE OF MERRIL, PICK UP ALLEY, and I talk here only of the crime flicks; well not them all.

Don't miss it, although...

"The Gilded Cage" is an invaluable portrait of some legendary lady supposed to have been painted by Degas, while he of course never painted such a portrait. The thriller intrigue is spun around this portrait, which some rogues plan to steal from its well established gallery, but of course such a theft could never be accomplished without help from the inside. Some ladies are involved, and the American Harry is involved with one of the ladies, who tries to warn him to stay out of the racket. His brother (Alex Nicol, a bit like Dennis O'Keefe) arrives from the states to find his brother vanished. When he tries to get a clue of how to find him from the actress his girl-friend, she gets murdered, and so the mess keeps developing with more murderous attempts, kidnappings, fisticuffs and all kinds of intrigues and atrocities, until the brother finally gets shot, and then you don't hear of him again, although he is said to still be living. It's an ordinary thriller with interesting London settings trying to muddle up the intrigue to puzzle the audience, and finally things get sorted out. The most interesting actors are Ursula Howells and Elwyn Brook-Jones, who both get murdered, and Clifford Evans, but the best thing in the film is the music by Stanley Black. The smiling man Ronan O'Casey adds some creepy spice to the intrigues but isn't the most dangerous man in the plot.