Grand National Night

It's a big day for racing stables owner Nigel Patrick. His horse wins the Grand National, and his mare foals. Of course, his bored wife, Moira Lister, leaves him, and then returns to quarrel with him, and then her body is found next morning in a car in Liverpool, but these things tend to balance out. Of course, a very suspicious and ambitious Police Inspector Michael Hornden come by to quiz everyone, and it's clear enough what he thinks has happened. It's especially clear to the audience when Patrick insists Miss Lister never returned.

Even with that, there are a few surprises in this movie. It's been opened up from a stage play, and a good job of it has been done. Even so, the incredibly posh names, like Colin Gordon's upper-class twit "Babs Darling" and Patrick's sympathetic sister-in-law, "Pinkie Collins", portrayed by Betty Ann Davies, clutter the screen. With Noel Purcell and Gibbs McLaughlin.

I loved this B picture, black & white from 1953 and very English of it's time. It takes place in Liverpool and involves a race horse owner (the always underrated Nigel Patrick) whose horse wins the Grand National. His blowsey but beautiful wife (Moira Lister) isn't interested in him, his lifestyle of managing horses or anything which has given them the grand lifestyle they have, other than indulging in the rewards that the money available gives her, to party all night and get drunk constantly and go around with other men. One night she comes home and a row ensues leading to a fight. She grabs a knife, and that's all we see until the following morning. The rest of the film follows the investigation of her disappearance, involving her sister, a police officer played by the excellent Michael Hordern, and various other friends. Eventually, Nigel Patrick is rumbled, he confesses to a family friend (a woman who seems to like him more than she should) and it is clear to us the audience that his number is up. I was expecting him to be led away to justice and the film to end. Just keep watching, I was totally fooled.

There are certain sub-genres of the crime drama which I will diligently seek out. Heist films, prison escape movies and the murder story in which we see who did it and how. 1920s crime fiction writer R. Austin Freeman invented the form and called it the 'inverted detective story'. Columbo, of course, is the most famous example of this format on television while, in film, we have Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. They're not so much whodunits as will-he-get-away-with-its? and are often headily suspenseful.

This thriller from Nettlefold Studios is slightly different. Racehorse trainer Gerald Coates (played by the always excellent Nigel Patrick) doesn't intend to kill his drunken, mean-spirited wife Babs (Moira Lister). As an accident, therefore, there is no careful preparation and cool-headed problem-solving of the kind Ray Milland or Jack Cassidy had to deal with. In truth, this decision makes the story less dramatic, but it also makes for an interesting change of pace, and ensures the protagonist has our sympathy. It could even be argued that he is the true victim of the piece as the viewers will surely wish they could kill Babs themselves.

The film was previously a radio serial on the BBC and, originally, a stage play by Dorothy and Campbell Christie. Its stage-bound origins are certainly obvious, as most of the action takes place in one large room at the Coates' country estate. Indeed, many such stories, in my experience, do originate on stage. (There seems to be something about watching people die at a very close distance that engages theatre audiences like little else.) There are a few scattered instances in which we go beyond those walls - we visit Aintree racecourse, for instance, there's an all-too-brief moment when Coates tries to evade the police on horseback, and a dreamily atmospheric flashback near the end.

The flashback, in particular, is required as, for most of the film, we are not sure just what has become of the dead wife. Indeed, it appears for a time as though she is still alive, as that is initially what Coates leads everyone to believe.

Things do not seem any clearer when Babs is revealed to have died in nearby Liverpool. Coates tries to keep a diligent detective - played by the legendary Sir Michael Hordern - from discovering that Babs had, in fact, returned to the house before her death.

It is a shame that Nigel Patrick didn't get more starring roles as he was clearly a very dependable actor. He was often cast as suave gentlemen, but I also caught him as a comically hyperactive spiv in 1948's tonally inconsistent Noose (avoid it). Also magnificent was Colin Gordon, a regular face on film and later television, who appears here in an unexpectedly key role. A neat bit of business, involving the two, wraps everything up neatly, making Grand National Night a pleasant and undemanding B-film.

An enjoyably twisty thriller set in the usual country mansion in which the event described in most plot synopses doesn't even happen on camera, loyalties and assumptions constantly shift and detective Michael Hordern is thwarted at every turn in his attempts to nail Nigel Patrick.

Among the supporting cast Gibb McLaughlin is given more to do than we're accustomed to; and Betty Ann Davies is startlingly made a platinum blonde the better to resemble Moira Lister's sister.

Many films clearly betray their stage origin. Here most action involves people entering and leaving the same room. However the strength of the story is the tension between the characters as they stand in close proximity which a stage version would have amplified, this film version largely dissipates with its many outside scenes. Also the flat footed direction short changes a good cast and reasonable story. Hitchcock would surely have added red herrings and more visual drama - close-ups, silences, glances and deliberate mis-direction. Hitchcocks "Rope" as one example. It was also, for 1953, rather old fashioned with horsey people, country house and butler (the butler didn't do it but plays a major and interesting role. Doubt if you can get such staff these days unfortunately) It occurred to me that the play could make a good Am-Dram project? 6.5/10