The Girl in the News

Most film fans will have seen "The Wicked Lady"(1945) before they see this 1940 film.It was surely in playing roles like nurse Anne Graham which convinced casting directors and producers that Margaret Lockwood would be ideal in her most famous role as Lady Barbara Skelton & Highwaywoman. Another reviewer mentions prejudice and it shows that society still believes "there is no smoke without fire".To get a job (even though you have been aquitted of murder) especially in a caring job like nursing, it is sad that it is necessary to change your name because prejudice lingers on in the mind of society.However in Hollywood U.S.A. and in other rich countries, it cynically seems that if you are rich and famous you can never be found guilty of a serious crime let alone serve time in prison when one can afford high priced lawyers to get yourself aquitted.So often the lower (and impecunious) social orders feel the full weight of the law.But here Anne Graham's lawyer for once is the hero.He bamboozles the villain to give himself away to justice using a neat bluff in court!Nice to see Roger Livesey playing the detective.His most remembered role is the doctor in "A Matter of Life & Death"(1946) and "The Secret Life of Colonel Blimp" both Powell & Preesburger films.

A young nurse who has been acquitted of poisoning her employer manages to find work under another name - and is accused of murder, by the same method, a second time. We know the guilty parties well in advance, and the solution of the crime by the nurse's attorney owes more to luck and intuition than to detection. There's no chase scene, no romance, not a great deal of suspense. From Carol Reed, the same director who made "Night Train to Munich", "Odd Man Out" and "The Third Man", this is a remarkably bland film. Still, it's very smoothly made, everything is focused on the story line, and the acting is uniformly excellent. It's a solid, professional piece of work (and I know that sounds like damning with faint praise), and while there's no urgent reason to see it more than once, it's certainly worth seeing once.

Margaret Lockwood is "The Girl in the News" as a nurse who is acquitted of murder, only to find herself accused again. Carol Reed directed, and besides Lockwood, it stars Emlyn Williams and Roger Livesey. Lockwood is Anne Graham, a young nurse working in a household when her invalid employer takes too many sleeping pills. Graham is accused of murder but acquitted. However, she finds getting a job impossible until she changes her name. Someone mails her a classified ad for a nursing job, for which she applies and is accepted. Then history repeats itself.

A very good film, excellently directed by Reed with an underplayed performance by Lockwood. Emlyn Williams plays her attorney. Though I figured this film out before the plot unfolded, "The Girl in the News" is still good and worth seeing.

Nurse Margaret Lockwood is acquitted of killing her patient by poison -- we see the woman commit suicide, so that's fine. However, when her next patient dies under almost identical circumstances, can she escape the hangman's noose? Twentieth Century-Fox spared no expense for their British production of this movie. They hired director Carol Reed and a fabulous cast, including Margaret Lockwood, Barry Barnes, Emlyn Williams, Roger Livesy, Basil Radford.... well, the list of performers whose name you'd recognize goes on and on. Sidney Giliat wrote the screenplay. Unfortunately, there are some problems with that script. There is never any doubt as to Miss Lockwood's innocence, and the attempt to do a Hitchcock-style thriller is weakened, both by the lack of Hitchcock's black humor and much of a sense of trying to hide from the police. Most of the actual action takes place while Miss Lockwood is in prison and on trial.

Without comparing it to other works, how does it stand on its own, as a mystery and courtroom drama? Pretty good. There seems a very real chance until the very end that Miss Lockwood will be found guilty, and the way she is acquitted is very clever. All the performers do a fine job and Carol Reed's direction is impeccable. I might have been happier if her guilt had been left in doubt; from my viewpoint, not showing the first patient kill herself might have better served the movie's suspense. However, there is still plenty of excellence to go around.

Perhaps because it's made by Carol Reed that you expect this to be something special? Clearly not everything he did was as innovative or imaginative as THE THIRD MAN but this shows no flair whatsoever. It's just.... competent.

Although the story is reasonably intriguing, the execution of this picture is so routine, were it made these days, you'd think it generated by A. I. It is however quite a clever little story so once you've watched this for five minutes you'll have no choice but to stick with it. You'll not be able to go to bed until you find out what happens to "Anne." One thing I can tell you is that she doesn't get any more animated. Nobody really does. Yes, the acting is natural and realistic but I think it's gone too subtle....sometimes over the top, wild and wacky is more interesting than sitting down drinking a cup of tea.

The whole thing feels miserable. Yes, I know it's about suicide, murder, fighting to save your life but they could at least smile every now and then. Maybe it's because it's 1941 - not the happiest year but this would hardly cheer 'our boys' up.

The romance between "Anne" and"Stephen" came as a complete surprise to me since I didn't detect any chemistry, feelings or emotion whatsoever between these two. Margaret Lockwood had a real talent for saying so much in just one look but you get the feeling that in this she just turned up and Carol Reed had no idea who she was or what she was capable of so just said: go over there and read that. I don't think I particularly liked Barry Barnes much either - couldn't warm to the chap.