Doss House

This film was shown as part of the quota quickies season at the NFT.According to the programme notes this film was made at Shepperton in its first year of operation.The studio was called Sound City and the owners also produced this film for distribution by MGM.The film cost £8000 and was shot in 15 days.Most distributors paid producers around £1.2 per foot for the completed film so MGM were clearly rather generous payers.The only familiar name on this film is John Baxter,in what was his second film.The film has echos of many other films he would come to direct.In particular it bears a striking resemblance to his penultimate film "Judgment Deferred" made 20 year later.At just over 50 minutes this film is brief and to the point.

This film is of note chiefly for its wide variety of characters and accompanying string of sardonic one-liners; its framing man-hunt structure (it's hard for me not to associate the Dartmoor convict on the run with the escaped murderer Selden from "The Hound of the Baskervilles") is used fairly openly as the merest device to explore this parade of unfortunates. There is material here for a whole compendium, but the running time doesn't allow for it. I confess to feeling somewhat let down when the detective duly gets his man after only a couple of the potential stories have been explored; so many others are characterised vividly in passing that we expect to hear more about them. The premise has potential to support an entire series of such films.

And such faces! Could an equal collection of ugly and individual features ever be assembled in the industry of today? The grouping and intimacy of the figures in their confined surroundings displays a thoughtful eye for composition.

The tale of the young journalist who displays a Clark-Kent-like transformation into fearless ally in the fight against crime is very much marginal to the piece. But this is deliberate. The film is a dry-quipping, wryly sentimental look at the lives of the down-and-out, which was apparently deliberately timed to profit from the publicity of George Orwell's celebrated book ("Down and Out in London and Paris"). It is played by and large with sympathy for the men's dignity, and with restraint; with an ironic detachment reminiscent of the literary detective writers of the period. And the script is a sharp one that brought many a ripple of amusement across the auditorium.

"Doss House" doesn't aim high, but it's pretty good at what it does.