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This post-war (1947) English psychological thriller directed by Roy Ward Baker is distinguished by its superb photography in deep blacks and brilliant whites by the German-English lighting cameraman Erwin Hillier who had been a camera assistant on Fritz Lang's "M" and Murnau's "Tabu." Hillier uses the expressionistic techniques associated with these German director's film's to create a complex series of highlights and shadows, contrasting high and low angle camera compositions to create a atmosphere of both glossy glamour and terrifying suspense. It's a shame that Hillier and Hitchcock never worked together. What a team they might have made!

Top class British entertainment of the old school, when the UK had a film industry. Atmospheric, edgy plot and direction (for 1947) thanks to Eric Ambler, and lots of period detail of character and setting that come from a world gone by. Plugging the iron into the light socket, for example. You'll laugh, but you'll be rooting for John Mills in the seedy lodging house full of dodgy salesmen, lingerie models and brigadiers' spinster daughters all the way. Mills is often a bit (literally) lightweight in leading roles, but here the character of a vulnerable, sensitive junior scientist fits like a glove. Well worth a rental.

The superb John Mills plays a man with a history of emotional imbalance. He moves into a rooming house peopled by the sorts who might be charming in a Barbara Pym novel. Here they are increasingly less charming: There's the classic nosy landlady. There's an elderly resident who begs for more coal on the fire: The way she's written to do this made me think of a leitmotif from an Eliot poem.

There's a homely bachelor; there's an attractive young woman involved with a married man. And, there are assorted eccentrics thrown in as well.

Mills meets Joan Greenwood, she of the dark, husky voice. And a murder takes place.

That's all I will say, lest I give anything at all away: Try hard to see this little beauty of a film, knowing as little of the plot in advance as I did. Indeed, before today, I had never heard of it.

If it were an American film of this period it would be called a film noir. It has all the elements but I don't think I'd call it one. It's a psychological thriller, a mystery.

The secondary roles are cast superbly in every case. It's tense, filled with fascinating characters -- it lacks almost nothing. And the two stars could scarcely be better.

A wonderful old black and white British film, that has John Mills suffering from a head injury sustained in a bus crash, is the suspect in a murder mystery, when a girl that he has helped out with some money, has been found dead. Good performances from the whole cast and the audience is kept in suspense up to the final scenes as to weather the murderer will escape.

The October Man (1947)

A tightly constructed, well acted, moody, night drenched murder mystery. Very British, very good. Is it amazing? No, but it beats old t.v. hands down. I mean, it's a layered, nuanced, gradually evolving story with some real feeling to it. But it's also a packaged affair, neatly imagined and in the ends not a bit surprising. The romance, at least, is satisfying--the couple seems a good match.

Eric Ambler, who wrote and produced, was a high visibility popular author at the time, and you have to assume the movie feels as close to the writer's intentions as possible. Director Roy Ward Baker is only on his second film here, and it shows a natural talent for economy and drama. (He would later direct the Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe suspense noir, "Don't Bother to Knock" during a stay in Hollywood.) His most famous film might now be "A Night to Remember" because it was the most complete telling of the Titanic story leading up to Cameron's.

In a seemingly British way, the story here is neatly contained. Agatha Christy comes to mind when the main character enters the hotel where most of the action occurs, and we get to know the small number of residents there, each a distinct type. And when the murder (of course) happens, we are led to suspect this person or that. Or at least we are supposed to. The movie makes the perp all too obvious, even before the crime, so you have to depend on how well the story is told instead of being curious who done it.

And it's well told indeed. The supporting cast, including the love interest, is competent. The leading man, the falsely accused victim of an earlier bus crash, is rather excellent, played by veteran serious actor John Mills. And all the foggy night scenes, and train and train station sections, ought to make those of you nostalgic for old Britain very happy.

John Mills is the "October Man" in this small 1947 British film costarring Joan Greenwood.

Mills plays Jim Ackland, a man involved in a tragic train accident that killed the child of a friend (actually played by Juliet Mills) he was returning to town. He suffers a fractured skull and is hospitalized for a year, as he has developed some brain damage. He blames himself for the accident and is haunted by it. It's actually not clear if he has actual brain damage - he acts perfectly normal and is totally functional - or has developed psychological problems. He leaves the hospital, takes a room at a boarding house and gets a job. His neighbor in the house is a pretty young woman (Joan Greenwood) who apparently is always having money trouble and possibly traded either downright sex or nookies for money with another resident of the house, Mr. Peachy (Edward Chapman). Meanwhile, she's seeing a married man. So one could say her life is complicated. Attempting to break the ties that bind with Mr. not-so-Peachy, she puts the touch on Jim for 30 pounds, and he writes her a check. The next day she's found dead in the Commons, the crumpled check nearby. Suspicion falls on Jim because of the check, the fact that he wasn't home that night she was killed and because of idle gossip started by Mr. Peachey. Meanwhile, Jim has fallen in love with his coworker's sister; though his old terrors return, he realizes that he needs to keep fighting and clear himself of the murder.

This is a good movie with a superb performance by John Mills and real British atmosphere which lends itself to the story and bumps up the suspense. As someone correctly stated, it is sort of a film noir but really more psychological in nature, which was all the rage after World War II. Very entertaining.

Well filmed and acted. The cinematography is first class and enjoyable.

I found the story unfortunately a little too obvious (you know who did it immediately) and that it will be resolved in some way in the letter the murdered woman sent.

Also you have to suspend disbelief on numerous things...that the police wouldn't search the dead woman's room carefully (and find her love letters) is the most obvious one. There were others (it sure is easy to escape from British cops) but for what movies do you not have to suspend your disbelief a little?

It is too bad they couldn't have sharpened up the story just a bit because all the other values are excellent...acting superb camera work etc...

It rates a 7--it is leagues better than most of the quota British films of the 50s.

RECOMMEND

One of the best pieces of acting I've seen John Mills do is in this film The October Man. It takes part of its plot from Laura and part of it from the American film High Wall that starred Robert Taylor.

Mills as he did on so many occasions was the British average Joe who as it happens suffers a traumatic brain injury as a result of a train wreck. He blacks out and comes back with no apparent rhyme or reason and his treating doctor Felix Aylmer says that's likely to go on for some time. No reason though he can't resume normal life and employment.

Which he does and starts living at a boarding house with the usual amount of busybodies. He even gets a relationship of sorts going with both Joan Greenwood and Kay Walsh. But when Walsh turns up murdered, Mills is looking real good for it to Scotland Yard guys Frederick Piper and John Boxer.

Of course Mills didn't do it, but the fascinating thing with The October Man is that we do learn before the end who did do it and that individual confesses to Mills. The perpetrator is also a mentally unstable, but has learned to hide it. And it looks very much as if Mills will not be able to prove his innocence.

The focus of The October Man is on Mills's plight. It's one of the best pieces of acting I've ever seen from John Mills. He does you really do think he's about to get into a jackpot not of his own doing.

The October Man was very much influenced by Hollywood noir, although I'm sure our friends across the pond could say our noir films were influenced by this. It's a very moody cinematographic piece with expert use of shadow and lights. And John Mills is heartbreaking in the role.

Don't miss this if it is ever broadcast again on this side of the Atlantic.

A very good performance by John Mills in an old-fashioned whodunit .As he was seriously injured in an accident , he has become a brittle vulnerable man .So when a murder is committed near the boarding-house where he lives ,it's only natural he is the main suspect.

As the spiteful old spinsters in the place are not Miss Marple ,and Hercule Poirot is not at hand ,the suspect has to lead his own investigation .The whodunit is by no means as strong as Mrs Christie's and the truth is revealed at least twenty minutes before the end,but interest and suspense are sustained throughout .

This is a cracking film, yet not many people seem to have seen it. All the performances in this film are great, but John Mills deserves a special mention for his excellent work in the lead role. The film also has great cinematography, a well-orchestrated sound-track and an excellent plot. Good work.

Psychological dramas are a cop-out until proved otherwise. This story is supposed to be about a mental patient accused of a murder he's not sure whether he committed. Yet this hardly drives the film at all. It shows up only in the odd close-up of the John Mills character (Ackland) frowning in self-doubt, as the evidence against him starts to build. The plot would have been stronger if Ackland had just been an ordinary Joe Blow with a clean bill of health.

What we are left with is only the mild satisfaction of peeping into a traditional Miss Marple guest-house, dominated by old widows playing bridge, tempered by one female who is sharply different - a striking case of beauty in distress, in the form of Kay Walsh as Molly, whose private life is getting too busy for her own good. And Joan Greenwood represents the shining reward that Ackland might enjoy if he ever gets out of this nightmare alive.

We can't reveal any more here. But most of the characters generally disappoint by failing to interact. One of them is just reduced to repeating "Can we have more coal?" (referencing rationing and the freezing winter of 1947 when the film was made), while Joyce Carey looks far too spinsterish to be 'Mrs' anyone. But almost any of them look more likely than Molly to be the local horoscope fiend. This brisk, sharp, canny operator really does not carry conviction as the mystic who befriends Ackland by flattering him on the grounds of his birth-sign, from which we get the film's title.

A few other nostalgic echoes, especially how the self-perceived servant class (cab-drivers, stationmasters, even some police) instinctively rush to obey a short, sharp word of command delivered in an establishment voice. But it must be said that scriptwriter Eric Ambler has done far better work than this as a novelist, which is how I classify him to the exclusion of anything else.

I first heard of this 1947 British film in one of Leslie Halliwell's books. Written by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Baker, it's kind of a British answer to Hollywod's noir, essentially a reworking of Grahame Greene's Ministry Of Fear. Chemist (and I do mean "chemist", not pharmacist or apothecary) John Mills blames himself for the death a friend's daughter in a bus crash, which also gives Mills a concussion and tendencies towards blackouts and amnesia. Quicker than you can say "Alfred Hitchcock" Mills is accused of murdering a fellow resident of his boarding house, and poor old John can't remember if he did it or not. What's most fascinating to me is the subtext -- Mills is clearly supposed to represent returning war veterans, but the film's makers were too afraid to have war wounds be the source of his blackouts (even though H'wood had already done it in The Blue Dahlia) and instead resorted to the bus crash contrivance. There is effective direction by Baker (who went to H'wood and made the classic 3D "depthie" Inferno, later returning to England to do A Night To Remember) and Ambler's script is good, with a few surprise scattered throughout.

I'm not the greatest fan of John Mills, but he is pretty good in this superior crime thriller. He is involved in a motor accident and many years later is still suffering from after effects when, whilst staying at an hotel, he becomes involved in the investigation of the murder of a fellow resident who is killed after she went out on a foggy London night to post a letter. He has no alibi, and his memories are inconsistent so the police begin suspect him of the crime. Can he do some detective work of his own to find the real killer? The story is pretty formulaic, but there are a few good (short) contributions from Joan Greenwood and Kay Walsh to supply us with enough red herrings to keep it interesting until, I have to say, a really pretty lightweight conclusion. Still, Roy Baker manages to keep the story intriguing enough to carry 90 minutes and I did quite enjoy it.

The October man is directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Eric Ambler. It stars John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey, Catherine Lacey, Adrianne Allen and Felix Aylmer. Music is by William Alwyn and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.

Following a bus crash that killed a friends child that he was treating to a day out, Jim Ackland (Mills) suffers a brain injury. During his recuperation it's revealed to him that he is prone to amnesia, and even though he's suicidal over the child's death, he's released back into society. Setting up lodgings at a hotel and back to work as an industrial chemist, Jim is functioning well. That is until he financially helps one of the young lady residents of the hotel and becomes the chief suspect when she winds up murdered in a park. Jim has no recollection of committing the crime, but he was in the park…

Pulsing with moody atmospherics, this Brit noir – psychological - thriller showcases the best of John Mills and the higher end of the British noir splinter. It's a post war London that's cloaked in shadowy streets, of parks harbouring spectral mists punctured by bulbous lamps, a train station a foreboding but visually stunning presence. Jim Ackland is suicidal and nursing amnesia, yet the hotel where he lives, itself a relic of a London that time forgot, is full of human beings from different ends of the evolutionary scale. It's not a good place for Jim to be, a cuckoos nest of spiteful, suspicious, vengeful, lonely people, Jim in fact, in spite of his problems, appears to be the only sane one there!

There is no great "whodunit" to be solved here, some critics have bizarrely complained that the murderer is too obvious! Bizarre because the makers don't try and hide who it is, the film is firmly interested in the human condition, in how members of society react post a heinous crime, and of course how the afflicted antagonist fights his corner when confronted by hostility and his own mental confusion. Roy Ward Baker, for what was his first direction assignment, is more than up for the job of crafting a noir thriller. He has a good eye for the visual traits that often marry up with human feelings or behaviour, of course having someone of Hillier's class on cinematography duty naturally helps him through his debut production.

Splendid entertainment. 8/10

Poor John Mills is being driven mad because the police are being very obtuse and refuse to accept he isn't the murderer.If they had watched many forties films they would have know as we do who the actual murderer is.The hotel is similar to the setting of Seperate Tables.A reasonable thriller.

Enough has already been said about the plot of this film, so I won't go into that aspect of it.

Anyone who is fan of John Mills will not be disappointed by this film. Up until this point Mills had mostly spent the last decade and a half as a matinee idol portraying England's blue-eyed son, dutifully packed off to war with a cheeky smile on his face.

In the October Man we get to see him portray a character suffering PTSD, trying to rebuild his life and facing prejudice for suffering mental illness. Sadly times have not much changed, you only have to look at what happens to our ex-service men who end up homeless and abandoned on the streets of Britain. These tortured characters he would portray in later films of the 50's and 60's, most famously as gin-soaked Captain Anson (Ice Cold in Alex), but perhaps even better as Colonel Barrow (Tunes of Glory).

A slight man, with expressive eyes and facial features he knew exactly how to use these physical attributes to convey to the audience genuine emotional feeling. He is after all, one of only a few actors to win an Academy Award for a role that had no dialogue (Ryan's Daughter).

It would be fair to say without Mills this film would be average at best, and you really don't know what he is going to do at the end of the film when we hear the train approaching.

I wasn't particularly impressed with this movie, other than the cinematography. I was unfamiliar with any of the actors, although I think I had hear John Mills name before. So I came into with no preconceived ideas of their acting abilities or talents. While the actors seemed to portray their characters reasonably, I think it was more the lack of pace and excitement in the plot itself that was this film's flaw. I'm a big fan of mystery films, so I was expecting to be held in suspense and on the edge of my seat, but there was none of that here for me.

Even though John Mills I'm sure is a decent actor, he seemed a little milquetoast in personality. Perhaps it was just the character's personality, but it made it hard for me to root for him.

But I did really love the cinematography. It was quite beautiful. And I love the time period and seeing the old house and sets.