Romance Interrompido

This is a good film for anybody who likes Hitchcock, Film Noir, Detective or Romance movies. It manages to hit all these bases nicely. There is excellent cinematography, a reasonably involving script and some very surprising, yet natural, twists in the plot. While the tension does not match Hitchcock at his best, it does stand up well against a lot of lesser Hitchcock efforts. For example, it is better than "the Wrong Man," "the Paradine Case," or "Under Capricorn." and as good as "Secret Agent." The actors were all fine, with Christine Norden giving her usual better than they deserve performance. She was perhaps the sexiest women working in British cinema at the time.

Here's the basic plot setup. A married man and married woman leave their spouses and run away on a train together. Racked with quilt, the man decides to return to his home. It appears that the emergency chord on the train gets pulled and a train wreck ensues killing 10 people. The man soon becomes the chief suspect as the person who caused the accident, yet there is much more going on here than first appears.

Some people might find the style of the ending a bit of a disappointment, but I think it was actually pretty fresh in 1949, and not at all the cliché it later became when overused in later movies and television shows. It is more logical and more satisfying than most endings of this style.

Richard Todd (John) and Christine Norden (Susan Wilding) elope on a train to begin a new life together, leaving behind their current spouses Valerie Hobson (Carol) and Alexander Gauge (Jerves Wilding). Whilst on the train, Todd bottles it at the 11th hour, pulls the emergency cord and jumps off the train to go back to his wife Hobson before she suspects anything. However, once home, the train, which he stopped near their house is involved in a crash that claims many lives, including that of Norden. The hunt is on for the person who pulled the emergency cord and Ralph Truman (Inspector Waterson) is suspicious of Todd. There is a good helping of suspense and there are some twists in the story along the way.

The cast are good in this film and there are plenty of good scenes. The film involves you from the beginning right up until the climax and the director throws in some surreal stuff towards the end. Watch out for Roger Moore sitting in the background at a cafe in Paddington Station while Todd and Norden order tea and rock cakes. The rock cake takes on a significance in this tale.

This is an amazing nightmare thriller taking you on a journey of constantly new surprising turns, and the fact that the journey is interrupted only leads a train of journeys leading you ever more astray and ending up in a nightmare abyss.

Valerie Hobson graces the film with her charming and amiable personality, whoever would have left a wife like that? - which the hero (Richard Todd) immediately realizes but to his dismay finds it is already too late.

The intrigue is fantastic. It's kind of Kafkaesque in its labyrinth of constantly worse complications, and not until the mother closes the door on Richard with her testimony of having identified her dead son herself you begin to suspect that everything is not quite all right - something begins to warn you about all logic and reality disappearing.

It's marvellously filmed with its turning more and more almost hallucinogenic, as the drunkard at the hotel really starts derailing for serious.

It's a wondrous concoction of a train of events leading you off the rails so often and so frequently that you begin seriously to doubt the honesty of the film, but you can stay calm - it all makes perfect sense in the end, as the detail of the clock finally concludes this strange odyssey of a psychological nightmare.

The Interrupted Journey is directed by Daniel Birt and written by Michael Pertwee. It stars Richard Todd, Valerie Hobson, Tom Walls and Ralph Truman. Music is by Stanley Black and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.

To Stop Train In Case Of Emergency Pull Down The Chain. Penalty For Improper Use £5.

That's a woman in a million.

Very tidy Brit noir this one. The story is a bit hokey as it enters Twilight Zone territories, but the twists, turns and mystery quotient keep it lively to hold the attention. The low budget is never a problem for Birt, who aided by the excellent Hillier, brings a feverish realm to the story by way of canted angles, shadow play and hazes, while certain images (shapes of doorways etc) are cunningly teasing the audience about what is going on. Cast are very strong to round this out as more than worth the time of the Brit noir film fan. 7/10

Notable for being penned by Jon Pertwee's brother, The Interrupted Journey is a particularly enjoyable film, it seems to go through different stages, melodrama to cat and mouse thriller, to murder mystery. It is very well crafted and particularly well paced.

I had difficulty trying to understand how the pulled cord could cause the accident, fortunately this is all explained.

Hobson and Todd are both excellent, although Carol's devoted wife act seems a total stretch by today's standards.

For 1949 it holds up incredibly well, a very god story, well acted, and features a really terrific twist.

It's truly worth a look. 7/10