Channel Crossing

A short feature with a rather slight storyline Set onboard a Dover to Calais ferry. The plusses are Constance Cummings as the leading lady and some other famous faces such as Edmund Gwenn (Of Miracle on 34th Street fame) and British comedian Max Miller (although he becomes a bit tiresome). Nigel Bruce is 5th billed as Nigel Guthrie, one half of a bickering married couple who mean more to each other than they know. Bruce pops up on a number of occasions but has very little to say for himself. Nevertheless, an interesting cameo.

A motley assortment of passengers board ship to make the channel crossing. Everyone is talking about the most eminent of the passengers: Matheson Lang, a big, bluff, friendly, immensely wealthy bear of a man, going to Paris to make a deal for his firm. He remembers every name and has a kind word for everyone.

I sat down to look at this movie, recognizing only a few names in the cast: Constance Cummings as his secretary; Nigel Bruce and Edmund Gwenn as two of the miscellaneous passengers; comedian Max Miller as a crazy commercial traveler in novelty junk; and Michael Wilding and Bernard Miles, not even on the cast list in their screen debuts. I found it a fine bit of a thriller as Lang's business practices are threatened with exposure and Anthony Bushell, insanely jealous of Miss Cummings' loyalty to her employer, winds up in the icy, fog-shrouded water. Did he jump or was he pushed? Mostly, I was impressed with Mr. Lang's performance. He had become a matinée star a quarter of a century earlier, and his performance is immensely graceful. I think you will find this movie immensely pleasurable.

A morally ambiguous thriller which asks us to consider the notion of "good" crime - the film's hero commits several extremely serious offenses! The film provides an interesting insight into the crises of both conscience, and in the negative social consequences, of market capitalism during the Great Depression. Matheson Lang appears to be running on autopilot, but Constance Cummings acts well and looks superb. Her boyfriend shows the timelessness of the cardboard- cutout matinée idol: his vapidity matches that of Leonardo Di Caprio in "Titanic". The extensive use of fog helps mask the Depression-era poverty of British film sets, and the clever use of stock ferry-crossing characters keeps the narrative moving: quite a challenge with such a slender plot line. Film-rep performers like Nigel Bruce have enough talent on show to build plot density, but the use of repeated footage (one foghorn shot used a tedious number of times) shows how few pennies there were to spend in an overtaxed and exhausted industry. Dashed good fun nonetheless, and worth several viewings.

I wasn't aware that this movie existed until I saw a VHS copy on a market stall recently and purchased it. I was pleased I did.

A lot of the action takes place on board a steamer travelling from Dover to Calais. A Dutch financier who has forged stock takes the steamer to avoid being found out, but his secretary's boyfriend discovers his secret and threatens to blackmail him. The financier then panics and throws the man overboard into the sea. His is rescued by a search party at the end.

The movie stars Matheson Lang and Constance Cummings. The only actors I am familiar with are Nigel Bruce before he played Dr Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone and Edmund Gwen, long before he confronted the giant ants in 1954's Them!

Though not brilliant, this movie is worth a look and I rather enjoyed watching it.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.