The Quiet Woman

Setting the film on the coast gives this film the advantage of being different from the majority of thrillers which are set on the mean streets of London.so I suppose you could coin a new descriptive phrase,film mere,for this film. It relies far more on the acting than the story,which you could describe as a lot of old rope.Dora Bryan and Michael Balfour give excellent support to the rather leaden leads. This film rather let's itself down by some truly dreadful process photography,which rather highlights the financial constraints placed on the production.There is not a lot more to be said about this film so I will conclude the review.

A winsome, mysterious woman (Hylton) tries to escape her troubled past in reviving an East Sussex tavern on the Bay with a trusty friend in tow (Bryan), encountering a pair of "pirate(s)," one an artist (Bond), the other a bosun's mate (Balfour), both proving helpful when her unruly half (Towb) comes calling in this rom dram quickie (71m) from Tempean / Eros. Directed and co-written by John Gilling (Recoil) (Adams), Quiet projects well on convincing, clever, sometimes very frank dialogue ("wished he'd died in prison") and one of filmdom's great kisses (@ 29:50) (Berman). Co-stars John Horsley as the coy customs officer and Dianne Foster in standard casting of the exceedingly beautiful, bitchy rival, it's one of the movies that has me falling head over heels for post-war British crime drama (River Beat, They Made Me a Fugitive, For Them That Trespass, The Slasher, Double Confession). A sea noir set near "Romney Marsh" with a smart script and notes that match the mood (Lanchbery), to call it simple is an admission of a weak heart, for these pictures that proliferated when England, a war victor, was struggling to adjust, are filled with feeling and suspense (3/4).

Having previously been married to a criminal, Jane Foster (Jane Hylton) takes over a coastal pub named 'The Quiet Woman' to start a new life with the help of her loyal and protective employee Elsie (Dora Bryan). She is indignant to discover that the previous owner had allowed an amiable local artist and part-time smuggler Duncan McLeod (Derek Bond) to use the pub for storing contraband goods but despite this, a romantic attachment develops between them. Helen (Dianne Foster), an old flame of McLeods, tricks her way into staying at the pub to pose for him but becomes jealous of Jane and taunts her about knowing her past and threatens to expose her. Pressure then mounts on McLeod when an old Naval colleague Inspector Bromley (John Horsley) arrives at the pub to stay for several weeks. He now is working as a customs officer. And then Jane's escaped convict husband turns up and demands her help.

This is a pretty typical British B picture of the period with flimsy plot and the minimum of props, much being made of outdoor filming and studio-bound back projection of seascapes in the latter stages that fail to convince the viewer the action is taking place in mid-English Channel. The best aspects of this film are the solid acting from a cast of well-known character actors/actresses of the period. In particular Dora Bryan gives a nice performance as Jane's trusted friend who is fiercely protective of her employer while keeping the romantic aspirations of McLeod's sidekick Lefty (Michael Balfour) at bay. The pleasant coastal photography gives the film a genuine seaside atmosphere.

If like me, you grew up with second feature films like this in the early 1950s, then you accept them as entertainment and enjoy the way things were done in those far more innocent times. If you criticise them, it should only be done against the criteria that prevailed then and not by today's standards. Given that, the only disappointment for me was the weak, improbable ending. I have the distinct impression that the scriptwriter suddenly decided he had better things to do than invent a plausible finale. A pity.

Saluting by the male characters and calling their betters "Sir" went on a lot in this film but their wartime experiences were part of the plot. It took me a while to recognise Harry Tawb as his distinctive look and voice was not fully developed yet.

The pub in this film was named after a mythical creature.

A nice snapshot of postwar gentlemanly dodgy dealing with the only loser being the excise man so we were all rooting for the smugglers of course. The smuggling was not the central plot however so this was more of a romance story than an exciting smuggling film was it was till enjoyable even for those not all that keen on romantic films.

Jane Hylton runs a pub on the water, but she used to do other things. Derek Bond is an artist, but he also does other things. And John Horsley doesn't do anything, but he also does other things. We find out soon enough what these other things are. Not all of them are nice, but the movie still goes on for 67 minutes, because there has to be a final scene involving a fight at sea in the fog, in what appears to be about four feet of water.

There's some good camerawork by Monty Berman, but this sort of movie, which tries to retain the audience's interest by the occasional Surprising Revelation doesn't do much to interest me. Character is revealed by action, not talk - unless it's one of those movies in which the characters are terribly clever people who say interesting things, which these people aren't.