Impulse

While his wife goes to London, a yankee (Arthur Kennedy) meets a beautiful lady (the sexy Constance Smith) and helps her with her damaged car. But everything gets more and more and more complicated. And she's so beautiful he cannot resist. Quite classic, but it's a true film noir story, directed with punch in usual settings but with so much efficiency, so many twists, as so often in british realistic film noir. Arthur Kennedy and Constance Smith live a strange love story, I wish the end would have been stronger. Yes, Cyril Enfield was a good director.

Alan Curtis has reached a point in his life where he's bored with the everyday, his job and wife no longer satisfy him, one night he comes to the aid of a beautiful young woman Lila, and makes a decision that transforms his life.

I'm really surprised by the mainly mediocre reviews for this film, I personally really enjoyed it. It morphs from a melodrama with light comedy into a crime thriller, some really fine performances, Arthur Kennedy was wonderfully charismatic, and had a wonderful speaking voice. Jean St Clair was huge fun as the lusting next door neighbour.

Constance Smith was undoubtedly the star of the show, such a beauty. It was an interesting character study, how a perfectly decent and sorted man could be dazzled seemingly to commit murder by a beautiful woman. If I have one major criticism it would have to be the ending, why on Earth did't Joy throw his packed suitcase at him.

IMPULSE is another typical British crime film, one that plays out in a very low key way and which features an imported American star in order to bring American audiences in. This time around it's a permanently stressed out Arthur Kennedy, playing a happily married man who decides to embark on a dalliance when his wife goes away for the weekend.

His problems begin when he helps a stranded woman who turns out to be a femme fatale played by Constance Smith, whose real life was more torrid and tragic than any movie. Smith is excellent, by the way, and gives the best performance in the movie. Kennedy finds himself obsessed by her, but he doesn't know that she's involved with some ruthless criminals who think nothing of committing murder to get their way.

Before long the film settles in the typical Tempean Films format, with a lone hero, the attractive women helping and hindering him, the thugs seeking to kill him, and the police always one step behind. It's rather undistinguished stuff that lacks a decent storyline to see it through and I was bored more often than not. Cyril Chamberlain's weary cop encapsulates the audience's mood on this one. Watch out for a youthful Kenneth Cope making his debut film appearance early on.

I just wanted to correct one of the other reviewers on this sight: Charles de la Tour is not the pen name of Cy Endfield. He was a director in his own right who had children, one of whom is RISING DAMP actress Frances de la Tour. Something that would be rather impossible if he didn't actually exist!

Estate agent Arthur Kennedy learns the hard way to be careful what you wish for when he laments he's getting into a rut in this nifty, well-photographed little Tempean potboiler with attractive London locations probably inspired by 'D.O.A'.

Kennedy is a far more interesting actor than the usual imported American you'll find in this sort of nonsense and quicker than you can say "briefcase" he's to his neck in a plot involving a flint-hearted femme fatale in cahoots with criminals after stolen diamonds that you'll probably find as bewildering as he does.

The detective story is trite but the real meat lies in the hero's everyday life ; the film owes a lot to Arthur Kennedy ,too often relegated in supporting parts; this excellent character actor is credible as an American emigrant who gets used to taking the five o' clock tea with his realtor partner but who does not renege on his orange juice for breakfast ;he has also a fancy for Dubonnet (an aperitif created by French Joseph Dubonnet in 1846). He seems sick and tired of his routine life, his spouse and his small town where nothing happens .As if it were not enough ,his next-to-door neighbor ,a spinster in love with him sticks as a leech. The scenes with Jean St John (including a card game in which she longs to be his partner) are worth the admission.

This diamond smugglers story is never really exciting ; actually ,it's a "north ny norwest" in miniature : the man in the street confronted to unusual events and who rises to the occasion -which is credible ,for he is a former marine-;and it's the contrast between these eventful adventures and this daily grain that is somehow endearing.