There is certain injustice in the fate of certain directors and cinematographers and both Graham Cutts and Hal Young (who also filmed The Lodger) do a very fine job in this film that makes their subsequent slide into oblivion seem extremely harsh if one compares with the subsequent success and vast, but only partially deserved, reputation achieved by their Gainsborough colleague, Alfred Hitchcock.
Novello's writing and acting are both blandly elegant and gruesomely mawkish by turns, but passable if one can endure the actor's old-fashioned music-hall penchant for "facials", but it is the camera that is the real star of this film and, at times, as in the ball-scene, it produces something rather fine that actually deserved a somewhat less trivial script and a somewhat less self-indulgent star.
If the German industry would be massacred by Hitler, the British industry would be pared (if also, in a manner, saved) by the quota quickie and in both cases the casualties in terms of directors and cinematographers would be many. The survivors were not always necessarily the best or not always at any rate so significantly better than those who failed to survive.
The key to surviving, and indeed thriving, in a difficult ambiance lay in seizing on and capitalising on what slender opportunities were available. making of a film is always teamwork but the balance of power between the various members of the team is very variable. A supposed "auteur" of a film is perhaps a fine artists but also not infrequently a thief and a bully.
In this film the fine work is done by Cutts and Young but it is never THEIR film as much of their work simply subserves the antics of Novello.. The film belongs therefore in a sense, rightly or wrongly, to Novello. Compare this with The Lodger (not in the first place written by Novello) where the partnership between Hitchcock and Young could hardly be closer and Novello gives a much finer, more restrained performance. But here the film belongs unequivocally to Hitchcock.
Survival was also a matter of temperament, self-publicity, opportunism, ruthlessness and an eye for the main chance and Hitchcock was a champion in all those respects. But one should occasionally pause to salute the best work of those who fell by the wayside.
