The Hundred Pound Window

1944
1h 24m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

An accountant is forced by circumstances to take a job at the racetrack. He is working at the betting window when he is drawn into a gang of criminals and their illegal schemes.An accountant is forced by circumstances to take a job at the racetrack. He is working at the betting window when he is drawn into a gang of criminals and their illegal schemes.An accountant is forced by circumstances to take a job at the racetrack. He is working at the betting window when he is drawn into a gang of criminals and their illegal schemes.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.2/10

YOUR RATING

3User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

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Storyline

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Trivia
For some years this was on the British Film Institute's list of "lost" movies until a 16mm print was found.

Quotes
Ernest Draper: That £10 a month is something I don't look upon as mine - it's something I've put aside for my children. It's my children's future.
O'Neil: Now now, just drop that grey-haired father stuff. You'd have taken the money from us if you'd won, wouldn't you? Would you have given it back to me if I'd come to you and said I wanted it for my children? I'm prepared to give you a chance. Chick will meet you at the bank at noon tomorrow and collect £1000 in cash. The balance will be payable in two weeks. How you get the money, or where you get it, is no business of mine. But believe me, you'd better make it your business to see that you do get it.

User reviews3

Featured review

6/10

Attenborough Supports

Frederick Leister is a bookkeeper for a bookmaker. He is a stuffy but kindly paterfamilias, who tut-tuts at son Richard Attenborough reading at the breakfast table, but slips him five pounds. He quite approves of daughter Anne Crawford's engagement to David Farrar; he and wife Mary Draper even buy some land to build them a house.

In short, he's a fine fellow. So when his employer decides to open a window for hundred-pound bets at the race track, he's to man it. There's no business, it's just a publicity stunt, but unsavory sorts, with names like "Chick" and "John D. Humphries" see this as an opportunity. Soon, Leister is called into the office, told he has to make up the difference, and finds his middle-class existence collapsing.

This is one of the B movies Warner Brothers produced at the Teddington Studio. A lot of them were missing, in part because the head of the BFI at the time -- whose name I will not mention, may it be forgotten forever! -- turned down the offer of prints because they weren't important enough. Soon enough a buzz bomb got them, and this one vanished for 70 years, until a 16mm. print with a blurry soundtrack showed up.

It was a tough watch because of that, but a rewarding one, because director Brian Desmond Hurst makes it all look improvised in character. Leister never harrumphs, but he seems supremely natural in his performance. A very nice little movie.