Hell Is Sold Out

One of those films that dealt - perhaps neither deliberately nor directly - with sorting out the muddle of war, and so a very distant relation of The Return of Martin Guerre as much as The Captive Heart. It was Lom's attempt at playing a romantic hero, and it didn't come off; he's too saturnine and grumpy. But artistically this has an upside, as it leaves us unsure whether the heroine will go for him or the more puppy-like, and more British, Attenborough. Alas, it all needs the Lubitsch touch, or at least the Michael Powell one; instead, it's wobbly in tone, shuffling between romance, comedy, farce and the odd echo of the war (Attenborough has blackouts caused by shrapnel in his head), along with some lame satire of Americans. It isn't bad - and it looks great, with high-contrast mono photography - but it isn't very good either.

It's important to bear in mind that this is a very French story. It is a comedy with dark undertones. "Hell Is Sold Out" is a best-selling book by a famous author who was lost among the casualties in the French resistance in the war. The problem is he didn't write it. Instead, it was written by a fan of his, who after the war presumes to be his widow and occupies his fashionable home, while she insists he was the author. Another problem: he turns up alive, and there is an awkward situation when he comes home and finds a wife of his occupying it whom he has never seen before.

Fortunately there is Richard Attenborough, a friend of the author's, who was in a Gestapo prison together with him, and he saves the film. He is a musician earning his living at a bar where he has to play popular cheap music while he is an excellent pianist of Chopin and Beethoven. This must be one of his finest roles, as his character of a poor musician and composer with a piece of shrapnel in his head that sometimes makes him collapse, is extremely sensitive and sympathetic. They are all good. Herbert Lom's character of the author reminds you of his later perfect impersonation of Napoleon in King Vidor's "War and Peace", he is always good in any role, and here he reminds very much of Charles Boyer. May Zetterling as the impostor who has written and published a book in Herbert Lom's name is always a glittering gem in every film, as beautiful as Grace Kelly but too intelligent for ordinary starhood. Then there is the incomparable Kathleen Byron in the most important supporting role, making a brief but striking and devastatingly efficient appearance - her last word sums up the entire film. The music is not very dominant but good enough as it is, while the scenes in the café are the most memorable, especially the one where Kathleen Byron makes her entrance.

In brief, this is a brilliant, intelligent comedy with sparkling conversation all through, and it is a pity that so few have understood to appreciate its credits.

Short and sour. Total tosh with up and coming future actors none of who are worth wasting your time on here. Some of their future success were often good, here forget it avoid ..............

This is a pointless film. Young Richard Attenborough gives a very sensitive performance, and Herbert Lom gives a good performance as well. But the film is a meaningless ramble, based (one presumes loosely) on one of the novels by the then best-selling Maurice Dekobra, whose novels are largely unreadable today because they are so boring and badly written. I suppose one could classify this film in the genre of 'romantic comedy', despite the fact that it is neither really romantic nor funny. Mai Zetterling gives a convincing performance as an impostor who moves into the house of a successful author thought to have been killed in the War, posing as his widow. It also turns out that she has written 'his' last novel herself under his name. She did this because his publisher (broadly over-played by Hermione Baddeley in trailing boas) had herself stolen the girl's diary which had been sent to the author while away at war, and published that as 'his' previous novel. Then the author, played by Lom, returns home after all, to find himself with a 'wife' and two successful novels, neither written by himself. A situation like that could have made a most amusing film if entrusted to the correct hands, but this film by pedestrian director Michael Anderson is tedious and unrewarding. Also, despite her acting talent, one wonders what it was that people saw in Mai Zetterling to make her a star at this time in several British films. She is not at all interesting either to look at or in terms of her screen personality. Perhaps she was the only Swedish girl any of them knew, and this was as exotic as they came at that time (yawn, yawn). Pretty tame stuff, tepid as well. Don't bother.

In 1945, successful writer Dominic Danges (Herbert Lom) returns home after the war, just to find a book called 'Hell is Sold Out' on the shelves - but he did not write this novel. In his house, he meets Valerie Martyn (Mai Zetterling) who has moved in. Since he was believed dead, she wrote the novel 'for him' and posed as his wife. He calls her a cheat and wants her to leave immediately, but unfortunately, 'Hell is Sold Out' becomes Danges' most successful novel, so the publisher wants the unmarried couple to stay together and continue the masquerade. When Valerie falls in love with Dominic's best friend Pierre (Richard Attenborough), this becomes complicated...

There are two possibilities to turn such a story into a movie. Either you make it a comedy, putting the characters into hilarious situations. Or you create a drama, focusing on jealousy and intrigue. This movie, however, could apparently not decide which way to go for. Thus it became too slow for a comedy, but did not set up convincing dramatic conflicts either.