Il segno del pericolo

This is a typical Durbridge thriller with a labyrinthine plot which is filled with bodies and a whole shoal of red herrings.A good cast of reliable character actors.

Francis Durbridge shines through with his special knack for women mysteries and their magic presence for being absent, you are reminded both of the Paul Temple series and "Melissa" and other spellbinding thrillers with mystical ladies, and here you have two of them murdered while one of them shows up not being murdered at all.

The intrigue is spun around a portrait, a weird old man commissions Robert Beatty, a poor painter and brother of the first casualty of the racket, to paint his lost daughter from a picture of her, which task gets him into thorough trouble, especially since one of his earlier models is found murdered in his flat.

It's not a bad film although somewhat superficial, of such an intrigue Hitchcock would have brought out a masterpiece, the action is a bit thick as too many things are happening at the same time and too many threads are being woven together in some confusion, as there is another casualty of a man jumping out of a window and lots of fisticuffs which at least twice completely demolishes the painter's entire flat - there is not much space to fight, but they do it the more thoroughly.

In brief, a very entertaining thriller with some magic in it, but you would have preferred the first girl (Josephine Griffin) to Terry Moore, but that's a matter of personal taste..

With its distant echoes of Laura, Postmark for Danger (a.k.a. Portrait of Alison) survives as one of the few English crime dramas of the post-war period with some of the grit and menace of American film noir. (Americans, plus one Canadian, make up the principal cast. But the film betrays its British provenance with its assumption of the utter incorruptibility of the London police - a notion that wouldn't pass muster on the west side of the Atlantic - as well as with its the-butler-did-it resolution.)

Robert Beatty, a commercial artist, hears some bad news from his pilot-for-hire brother (William Sylvester): a third brother has died in a fiery car crash in Italy, along with a young actress he had met. Then strange things begin to happen: The police grow interested in a postcard his dead brother may have sent him, as do elements of the underworld; and the father of the actress commissions him to paint a portrait, working from a photograph, of his daughter. Next, he returns to find the portrait vandalized, the photograph missing, and his favorite model dead in his bedroom, wearing the gown in the painting. He becomes the prime suspect in the murder when no evidence can be found to support his wild claims - until the supposedly dead actress (Terry Moore) shows up at his door.

At the end of the day, Postmark for Danger settles down into a tidy police procedural about a ring of diamond smugglers. But for much of its course it unfurls in a tantalizing mist of eerie and unlikely coincidences, many of them centering on the word `nightingale.' Credit should probably go to director Guy Green, who started out as a cinematographer (he shot David Lean's Great Expectations). It's an enjoyable if minor entry, albeit one with just a little bit extra.

The film opens with a fiery car crash off an embankment in Italy and the brother of Robert Beatty and William Sylvester is killed. But not before he dashed off some postcards to several folks including the brothers. One of those postcards has some coded information concerning the crooked dealings he's involved with.

Having Sylvester be a pilot gives half the plot away because you know he's going to be involved. But the question is who is the ringleader of a smuggling operation?

Terry Moore was supposed to have been killed with the brother in the crash. But she shows up in London and is then a target for the bad guys. She's also a subject for Beatty who is a portrait painter.

Portrait Of Alison is a nice and tight British noir film. Starts off slow, but picks up quite nicely a quarter of the way through.

Love how Britishers Beatty and Sylvester talk like Americans or at least how they conceive what Americans sound like.

This UK film from 1955 opens with a car racing along the road, over the cliff it goes, and bursts into flames when it hits the canyon below. Geoffrey Keen is Inspector Cobly, who is investigating the accident. We are introduced to Tim and Dave, the brothers of the deceased driver. You'll recognize "Henry" (Allan Cuthbertson) from Fawlty Towers, and whole lot of British TV. I see Hopscotch (AWESOME film) in Cuthberson's list of roles, but can't remember what he did in it. Tim (Robert Beatty) also starts checking out what's going on, and he bumps into people who have the answers, but don't want to give them up. Terry Moore stars as Alison, and seems to be at the center of all this grand adventure. Pretty entertaining. I've never seen this one before, and as of today, doesn't have any comments on the discussion board. Must be new to Turner Classics. There is a twist here and there, but nothing earth shattering. Story by Francis Durbridge, who wrote this in between all the (British) TV series for which he was known. Directed by Guy Green, who had received an Oscar for directing the 1948 Great Expectations.