Behind the Headlines

It's hard to know if British newspaper reporters ever really behaved like this, seeing it as their duty to investigate and solve a crime for the sake of a `scoop' story on the front page of the daily newspaper. But who cares? After all, it's an interesting variation on the private detective genre, which in turn is just a variation on the police genre. The main point is that the audience is entertained by the right combination of mystery, suspense, intellectual deduction and risk of violence, in the fight between good and evil.

All of those features are present in this movie and the result is a reasonably satisfying crime story with a London setting. The newspaper reporters sure don't sit around meekly waiting for press releases about people `helping police with their inquiries'. And things are spiced up even more with some love interest to distract our heroes along the way.

But that's not all. A major part of the fascination of this movie is its time-capsule quality. It's a snapshot of Britain and its film industry in the mid 1950's - struggling, but largely failing, to assert some uniqueness in the face of post-war Hollywood domination. Like a number of similar British movies of its day, American stars join local British actors in an attempted blending of trans-atlantic cultures. Chic apartments and widespread use of cocktails and guns remind us of New York. Boxy British motor cars and pokey gas room heaters tell us that after all this is still post-war Europe. Somehow the whole cultural ambience is fake, imitation, envious and ultimately wanting to be somewhere else. Maybe that's partly why the British film industry was engulfed by Hollywood; it could never hope to deliver American cultural aspirations as well as the Americans could.

All in all, this movie provides good basic entertainment and a fascinating glimpse into the not-so-distant past.

Some newspaper men and women try to find out who killed a curvaceous blonde before the police do. Banner the freelance hack starts to fall for Adrienne Corri, though neither of them seem to have their hearts in it.

Then Banner's ex-fiancee turns up to fill in for his secretary and it turns out she's Hazel Court. Corri tries some arch banter, but Court is much better at it. That is, if you like arch banter, which I don't. In fact, I loathe it. What's worse, all these shenanigans are supposed to be funny.

It was a bad fashion moment, though there have been worse. Most frumpy outfit: Courts tweed coat dress with removable cape when she turns up at the Hastings hotel.

A blonde picks up the phone and talks, making statements that sound like threats. Moments later, she is killed. The next day, the press is at a bar across the street from her flat. Among them is Paul Carpenter, who runs a one-man news agency, ever since his fiancee, Hazel Court, walked out on him for spending too much time with competitors like Adrienne Corri.

This movie aspires to be one of those romps in which reporters get to the solution of a murder before the police, trading quips with the girl who is tired of being the lonelyhearts editor and wants to cover real news. Unfortunately, while Carpenter maintains the lighthearted diffidence such a role calls for, the writing isn't up to it; he works in a constant fog, uncertain of what is going on or why someone is trying to kill him and how he almost succeeds. Miss Court is excellent. I can't recall the last time I saw her less than that in the miscellaneous roles she played.

Though not a complete unknown to me, I must admit that I do not know much about Director Charles Saunders. That said, he does a credible of keeping BEHIND THE HEADLINES riveting, thanks mainly to a clever and humorous script by Allan McKinnon, and a terrifically effective cast that certainly falls short of stellar but has an in-form Paul Carpenter with the capacity to charm the pants off any female... and when two bombastic beauties like Hazel Court and especially Adrienne Corri appear in his cross hairs, he needs no love potion (or blue pills - of course, they didn't have those in 1956).

Photography rates competent, but I recall no particularly imaginative or unusual shots.

I liked the sharp and flirty repartee between Carpenter and the two beauties, and I was impressed with the subtle villain, matched by Carpenter's own subtle deception in the climax.

Great fun in a short 55 minutes.

This is the type of film which used to appear as the B film in British cinemas in the 1950s and a staple of British TV up till recent times.Paul Carpenter stars as a reporter trying to find scoops on a woman blackmailer who is murdered in her flat at the beginning of the film.He falls initially for the affections of a rival reporter,Adreienne Corri,but his true affections lie with his secretary,Hazel Court,Queen of the B films.The fact is that there is not much mystery as there are not a multiplicity of suspects.Though it is hard to believe that the murderer would try to kill Carpenter since it would only make his chances of capture more likely.Anyway a reasonable film of its genre.