The Third Visitor

Suave supercilious Carling (Karel Stepanek) receives several callers to his isolated house, all of whom hold a grudge against him. Next morning a corpse is found, and later identified as his by one of the visitors.

An atmospheric thriller with Gothic overtones, including a villain living in an old dark house complete with underground passages, whose architect he attempted to bury alive, THE THIRD VISITOR is one of two films made in succession by veteran director Maurice Elvey for producer Ernest Gartside, the other being the slightly better known THE LATE EDWINA BLACK. It opens vividly with the electrifying music over the title credits (an unacknowledged straight lift of the first movement coda of Bruckner's 9th symphony) culminating in a striking shot of a woman, manacled against a wall with an unseen person on the verge of firing at her, as the legend WHO WAS THE THIRD VISITOR? is emblazoned across the screen. Though there is a great deal of dialogue the actors and the occasional directorial flourish such as this ensure that tedium is kept firmly at bay. Typically spirited performances ensue from Sonia Dresdel (in a rare sympathetic and at times light-hearted role) and Eleanor Summerfield as two wives who clearly don't play second fiddle to their respective husbands (Colin Gordon and Hubert Gregg), their only real match being Guy Middleton's Inspector. Film's main flaw is the risible casting of John Slater as a New York gangster.

It's seldom that Bruckner's music has been used in films, the only other instance I know of is Visconti's "Senso" 1954 three years after this one, but it certainly gives a certain mood from the start of tension and doom. Although an atrocious murder is committed from the start, you even see it being done and by whom, there is no question about it, the development seems rather innocent and harmless, as there are mainly only discussions and arguments and roundabouts to divert the attention, and even the inspectors get impatient by the fooling around. But it's worth waiting for the end. You have to learn what that mishandled lady in the introduction was all about and whatever it had to do with the atrocious murder. Although nothing seems to make any sense and add up, it does so in the end after all and with a vengeance. It's a clever thriller, Sonia Dresdel keeps the suspense up all the way by most of all her sparkling dialogue, and there is a mystery figure as well, the strangely pathetic Hewson (Michael Martin Harvey), whom everyone has some apprehension of, who maybe knows too much and isn't as mad as he seems. Finally the war also plays an important part, and that's where the trauma makes a final entrance concluding this strange play of destiny and vengeance.

This is quite a cleverly constructed little thriller from Maurice Elvey. We start by watching Karel Stepanek ("Carling") being bludgeoned to death and assume that the remainder of the premiss will be for the police to cotton on and capture the man we know to have committed the murder... Well, there is one great fly in that particular ointment and we have to wait until the last ten minutes or so to really find out that this has much more going on as we discover no lack of suspects or plausible plot lines that lead us to question what we know we saw at the start. Sonia Dresdel ("Steffy") is on good form and the small and well focussed cast keeps the suspense taut and engaging. The score and lighting add bundles to the mystery too - and with a soupçon of Nazi undertones the whole film is really quite a good watch.

Prior to seeing this movie, I had never heard of Sonia Dresdel. But my first glimpse of her rousting her frazzled husband out of bed was enough to hook me. It only only goes to show that attractiveness is as much a matter of attitude as physical charm.

She's certainly one of most eccentric beauties I've ever come across. Her Wiki entry states her great successes were on the stage and I can see why. Her voice, appearance and manner, alternately languid and chipper, are unique.

Indeed, the tacked on ending only worked to the extent it did because she had already built such a rapport with this viewer that he was willing to swallow it.

The Third Visitor moves along at a fair-paced clip , with acting honors to Sonia Dresdel – a singular actress whose unusual angular features and raven-like manner clutch and hold the camera's attention. (She played the hissable Mrs. Baines in The Fallen Idol (1948). One critic said that she had "a real power to take an audience by the wrist and give them the works. She had terrific personality and was terribly underused and misused. She would have been the Lady Macbeth of all Lady Macbeths.")

Mr. Richard Carling (Karel Stepanek), a superior sort of gent who had apparently graduated with honors from some Central European school of sneering, has various people, including an American gangster and a mysterious woman, call on him one evening at his isolated mansion. The next day a corpse, identified as his, is discovered, and a police detective (Drew Middleton), an Inspector Japp/Lestrade clone, complete with bushy mustache, rumpled raincoat and a carefully cultivated vagueness, goes nosing around to find the killer. He bumps heads with the sort of characters who inhabited British melodramas of the '40s and '50s, including the witch-like Steffy Millington (Sonia Dresdel) and her daffy hubby, Bill Millington (Colin Gordon), a couple with an unexpected supply of light-hearted Noel Cowardish banter; a sour-looking blonde, Vera Kurton (Eleanor Summerfield), and her pleasantly bland husband, Jack Kurton (Hubert Gregg), who exchange salvos rather than words; and a weirdo with the charisma of a talking fungus (Michael Martin Harvey). These folks scuttle in and out of view for an hour and a half, dropping clues for the industrious Inspector to scoop up and make sense of. Chaired skillfully by the incredible Maurice Elvey, who directed nearly 200 British films between 1913 and 1957, The Third Visitor is a remarkably satisfying little crime drama with a plot that twists and turns, keeping you guessing right to the neatly unexpected finale. Filmed in black and white, in the austere setting of post- war Britain (some of the scenery would seem to have been borrowed from the original stage play), it's a semi noir, wholly crafty 90- minute mystery masterpiece, all the more satisfying because I had never heard of it.