Shadow of a Man

After a drunken evening, Bill Nagy is found dead the next morning. A coroner's jury finds he died of heart failure. Police Inspector Tony Quinn has his doubts, so while widow Rona Anderson is away, he has the body exhumed. An autopsy discovers the tip of a hypodermic needle in his arm, and death by air embolism. It's murder!

The cast list and the fact this is based on a stage play inspired confidence. Then I saw it was an E. J. Fancey production and almost didn't watch it. While it's a nice murder mystery, and Geoffrey Faithfull's camerawork are good, something is very wrong with the dialogue. Not only is it terribly hackneyed, but the performers speak their lines as if they had not had a chance to rehearse them.

Much better than your average fayre, this one. After an altercation in a nightclub; a drunk (Bill Nagy) is found dead. Initially the coroner says it was a heart attack, but neither the police nor his old friend "Landers" (Paul Carpenter) are satisfied and along with his widow (Rona Anderson) they try to get to the bottom of it. There are a couple of sub-plots to this and the photography in/around the English seaside resort of Hastings provides for quite an interesting look at life in Britain in the 1950s - and relishing in their habit of holidaying in great numbers where there is a windswept pier!).

SHADOW OF A MAN is one of the cheap thrillers put out by the notorious producers E. J. Fancey, a man whose films tend to be singularly devoid of excitement, intrigue, and suspense. This bog standard mystery thriller about the hunt for a murderer is a case in point. The only thing it has going for it is location photography in Hastings, and even that isn't very good.

The story is about a drunk who's found dead after a night out. The police investigate on the suspicion of foul play and soon come across a number of suspects who may or may not be involved. Meanwhile, the dead man's buddy searches for the murderer himself.

SHADOW OF A MAN stars the ubiquitous Canadian actor Paul Carpenter as the best buddy. In this one, Carpenter plays a rather volatile character who goes around punching out anybody who dares to insult the memory of his dead friend. The equally ubiquitous Ronald Leigh-Hunt plays in support. Sadly, the mystery narrative plays out in the most ordinary way imaginable, and there's not a single thrill to be had from the script. I'd skip it.

Set in mid-50s Hastings there might be something to interest the social historian but otherwise this picture has nothing to it that is truly cinematic: dialogue, direction, music, photography and especially acting all fail to coalesce into anything convincing. Disconcertingly the narrative lurches for one scene into Chandleresque first person and then out of it again, the very unsatisfying result of which is that a central character never fully emerges. In all another failed attempt at post-war British film noir.

After an interesting title sequence involving a grinning model Buddha rocking back and forth and rolling it's eyes, this settles into a sombre, well-photographed little drama with the novelty of being filmed in Hastings and a plot twist involving the medical condition of one the main characters which would probably draw protests today.