Wheel of Fate

Wheel of Fate is a different to the majority of films make the Rank during this period. It comes from a different studio. It comes across as a shorter, more direct film with less stage-setting and plot development and a focus on getting the story across.

The story is about two very different brothers, who run a small garage, owned by their eccentric and bed ridden father. They fall into conflict over a nightclub singer.

The film is a bit like reading a short story - expect it to happen quickly.

This drama is like a play by Tennessee Williams, intense and loaded with passions and complexes, one brother being orderly at pains with keeping up the business, the other being good for nothing, drinking and gambling and growing debts, easily provoked to recklessness, collecting troubles for himself and others. The first row is about the girl Lucky Price (Sandra Dorne), a loose lady at a night club getting drunk but beautiful enough for both brothers to engage in her fortune, getting her out of that night club by the help of the more responsible brother, while Ted, the stepbrother, is left to go from bad to worse. He is actually the interesting part, Bryan Forbes making a very credible character out of the wanton carelessness of a man without character, who gradually perishes in his nervous breakdown - there are some terrific scenes in the end when they chase each other amidst arriving trains. The music is also excellent. This is a late enduring classic of a noir of a more condensed and intensive calibre touching on a straight documentary style.