The Passing Stranger

An attempt to break into features by several interesting talents offering a moody but drab & tinny slice of low life with the novelty of being set in Oxfordshire, a rather monotonous guitar score and an interesting cast of youngsters (including fleeting appearances by Harry Corbett before he added the 'H.' and Warren Mitchell).

The best aspect of "The Passing Stranger" is the array of recognisable minor actors of the 1950s in the cast and the backdrop in some scenes of London docklands.

Lee Paterson was underwhelming in the lead and my first reaction to Diane Cilento was that she was an unlikely person to run a "greasy-spoon" cafe for lorry-drivers, especially when wearing a tight-fitting top in the early scenes. But later close-ups showed a woman without the glamour of her later roles.

Lee Patterson as Turner and Lyndon Brook as Johnny Sanderson in "Reach for the Sky" (1956), Liam Redmond as an Irish immigrant in "A Night to Remember (1958), Paul Witsun Jones in "The Gordon Honour" (1954) BBC tv childrens hour serial, Diane Cilento in "The Little Hut" (1953) with Kenneth More; are just some of the actors I recognised from my childhood.Recently there is a new tv channel 81 in the London area called "Talking Pictures" which I increasingly find myself watching as they show the old films I relish and which remind me of my youth ( I am now 72).

No spoilers I promise but you must always remember there was a film code which producers had to abide by in films like "Passing Strangers (1954), which meant characters could not profit from their mis-deeds.Lee Paterson as Chick a US deserter in the UK, elicits our sympathy when he falls in love with the attractive blonde Diane Cilento as Jill (Sean Connery's ex-missus).Another fascinating aspect of these old films is seeing cars on the street I remember in the 1950s.I believe I am one of the first users to comment on this film but don't worry "Talking Pictures" are bound to repeat it in the not too distant future.

As has been stated by one of the other reviewers there is sometimes more pleasure at watching familiar actors and Britain in the fifties than anything in this film.That is definitely the case here.Clearly a minimal budget and the incorporation of all the usual cliches contributes to this particularly the climax.I have Diane Cilentos autobiography to dad and it runs to a massive 528 pages

Lee Patterson rents a room in the cafe run by Diane Cilento and her sister, Olive Gregg. He's a deserter from the US Army and on the run, hooking into some underworld operators for the cash to get back to America without papers. Miss Cilento and he fall in love, and decide to run away together.

Cinematographer Walter Lassally shoots Miss Cilento to her advantage, and Patterson looks good in a t-shirt, but this movie doesn't offer any sympathy to Patterson, especially after it stops dead for ten minutes for a flashback to fill in his story. Perhaps it's my middle-class attitude and advanced years, but I feel no sympathy for the leads; if Patterson wants out, he should have slugged an officer and taken the two years at Fort Leavenworth, and if she wants out of her cafe, it turns out that London is an hour's drive away. I feel more sympathy for Duncan Lamont, who has had an understanding with Miss Cilento for some years, but she has insisted on some financial stability, while she's ready to run off and live an underground life with Patterson. Erratic pacing doesn't help.