La scogliera della morte

Leslie Halliwell in his book HALLIWELL'S HARVEST refers to this as a "smoking room story", which is the kind of reminiscence tale told between old friends in a club over drinks. It is not given in one shot - all good anecdotes are told slowly and build up. This one (apparently based on a true incident from the Far East in the late 1940s) takes it's time, but as it progresses the momentum of events squeeze and squeeze the human personnel involved until the moment of crisis.

Do you believe in fate? It is an issue that has perplexed man since we first began to reason. Are our destinies written out in the stars of astrology, or in the hands of the three Greek "Fates" who spin, measure, and cut our threads? Or is everything done by chance, pure and simple? Years ago I read a portion of an essay by William James (I think it was him) for a philosophy course. James dismissed fate - he felt that the problem with believing in it is that if you decide to go down street A to reach point D a fatalist will say that you were always supposed to do that. But if you go down Street B to reach point D the fatalist would say the same thing, and that didn't sit well with James. But a fatalist would probably point out that as you went on that occasion only by one of those routes, that is the destined route you had to take at that occasion. So who can really know? In THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP, Michael Redgrave is a British Air Marshall who must go on a mission with several others, including Denholm Elliot and Alexander Knox in one of the military Dakotas used in World War II. There would be nothing wrong about this, but Michael Hordern who is in charge of arranging the trip has just had a nightmare wherein Redgrave, Elliot, Knox, and several others are traveling to the location of this mission (which Hordern did not know about when he went to bed that night) in a Dakota that is in mechanical difficulties and in very bad weather. In fact, it is crashing on a beach.

Hordern makes the mistake of telling this to the three of them, and while Redgrave pooh-poohs it, Elliot and Knox are not as certain (although Knox pretends it is all nonsense). Among other things, a major political figure (Ralph Truman) is supposed to be on the plane too in the dream, and he is not scheduled to attend the mission that Redgrave is going on. So the preparations go ahead. But point by point, little things from the dream begin to fall into place in the real world. For example, at a stopover, Truman suddenly shows up - he has to go by the Dakota on a separate trip, hooking up to another flight later on. Also there are a certain number of passengers, including a noisy one, who are to be on the plane. Everyone is happy when the number of passengers goes down, but it goes up as well. Then a rather noisy, boisterous businessman (George Rose, naturally), comes on board - literally manipulating his way on board when initially kept off by Elliot and Knox (he circumvents them going to Redgrave and Truman).

So the circumstances grow in the small world of that pressurized cabin as the passengers watch amazed at how good weather collapses and engine problems multiply (they can't raise the plane above a certain level outside the storm due to a pressurization problem - ironically enough). But Redgrave maintains his icy calm throughout the situation - he is determined that he and the others are not going to give into panic over the paranormal.

The film is excellent in tackling this type of situation in a serious way. In the end it does not matter if you are a fatalist or not, the film will carry you to to it's conclusion successfully.

One final minor point. I don't know much about the scrap metal business, but this film (made in 1955) and the Judy Holliday movie BORN YESTERDAY (1950) and one classic sequence in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) with Dana Andrews and the scrapped fleet of bombers are the only ones that seem to tackle this growing big business. A lot of military hardware was there for the taking after 1945. In BORN YESTERDAY, Harry (Broderick Crawford) owns junk yards and has built a local empire on scrap metal (and is in Washington to try to get the laws altered to expand his business). Here, George Rose (an English counterpart to Harry) is trying to get on the flight in order to get to Japan for an important conference dealing with British scrap metal interests in the Far East (and he constantly mentions the American competition as intense - a nod to Crawford?). It's almost enough to start a college study into the post war scrap metal business!

The seediness of the post-war colonial Far East and that rather morbid fascination with death and fate that pervades the consciousness of people who have been through a world-shattering conflict flavours this film. A great script (by RC Sherriff of 'Journeys End' fame) and a great cast - headed by that master of actorly understatement, Micheal Redgrave - slowly build the story, bit by bit. The exotic setting, where strange things could happen. The drab ordinariness of military outposts - which hightens the surreality of the events. A sense of a military and aristocratic world giving way with poor grace to the brash 'modern' future - epitomised by the crass Brummagem scrap dealer (accompanied by his effete elderly public-school personal assistant). The sense of dread is created by the pure spoken word and performance - of a good tale well-told. MR James in the age of Dakotas.

From the title, I was expecting a gambling yarn along the lines of "The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo", but instead I got a very British suspenser directed by the late, venerable British film critic Barry Norman's old dad Leslie. It's got a good cast too of top British talent, including Michael Redgrave, Sylvia Sim and a young Denholm Elliott and just-as-young Michael Hordern, who actually looks pretty much like his later, much older self.

The story has the hallmark of the much later Hollywood "Final Destination" series as Hordern's non-traveling R.A.F. commander reveals to Alexander Knox's ambitious Far Eastern diplomat a weird dream he had the night before of a particular group of people including Knox, on a particular flight flying into a terrible life-threatening storm over Japan. Knox has never flown and dreads the thought when he's corralled into the aerial mission but is comforted when the personnel details Hordern provided don't match up to the expected passengers, but that all changes when the ducks all line up in a row overnight as the aeroplane type and planned passenger list eerily changes to match the related dream.

That list, which prominently includes Redgrave's senior Air Marshall and his P.A. Elliott, a former pilot now reduced to ground duties after suffering a nervous breakdown from his war-time pilot duties, is expanded to include initially two late-returning soldiers, then a young woman, Sim, a lordly government V.I.P. Ralph Truman and to complete the fateful eight (passengers) a spivvy, gobby businessman and his elderly male secretary who, added to the crew of five, headed by pilot Nigel Stock, take the total personage on board to unlucky 13. As the story of the dream leaks out, mostly from the terrified Knox, the passengers start to fear the worst, especially when the plane flies off course and straight into an almighty storm...

I found the first hour of the movie rather slow-moving, with stereotypical character types demonstrating the familiar British traits of reserve and stiff-upper-lip. The little model plane used for the exterior shots is hardly convincing either as it takes a supposed battering and just how or why Hordern dreams his dream is left unexplained. I also kept expecting some sort of emotional outburst from Elliott's obviously damaged character while Sim's character and that of the two working-class squaddies seem just like so much padding.

However, the tension ratchets up nicely as the film hurtles towards its destiny, there's a pretty effective crash scene and a neat pay-off joke as Hordern's character reveals the outcome of his latest sleep to his next acquaintance on the ground.

Overall, this was a good under-the-radar movie to get on board and if not an absolute high-flier, certainly made for an interesting and entertaining journey.

This is a film which will stay with you for a long time. Its title sets the tone for what follows : a flight which, as it continues, looks more and more to be one that will end in disaster and thus, apparently, mean that a man's dream regarding it will come frighteningly true. The increasing sense of foreboding is alleviated at one time or another by a development that appears to be at odds with the dream, that is, until something else transpires which then sees the exact circumstances of the dream restored. It is a film which, not unnaturally, gives rise to tension-laden conversations about whether there is such a thing as fate, but that is not the main impact of this film, which is that one's attention is riveted from the opening scene to the final shocking end.

until

A 1950's movie from the British studios. The basis of the plot is relatively simple, however, the outcome is never really obvious. It may not keep you on the edge of your seat biting your nails but it does keep you guessing till the end. A few lines at the very end by two of the lesser characters adds a finish not really seen till the advent of the "Twighlight Zone" TV series. Shakespeare used the use of dreams in many of his plays. This created his characters thoughts and actions. It seems that this method is used in this film for the same reason and pushes the movie along. The movie has a classic British cast such as Michael Redgrave and Denholm Elliott. Whilst the other actors names might not be easily recalled. They are readily identifiable and seen in numerous British movies of the 1940's and 50's. There is a small amount comic relief in the movie through the minor characters of two British soldiers. Australian viewers may even find hard to recognize one of them as being the local classic actor Bill Kerr. It is an old fashioned movie worthy of a watch.