Heures d'angoisse

The Small Voice never quite descends into 'so bad it's good' territory, but seldom amounts to anything more than routine, run of the mill noir by numbers.

James Donald is part of a valiant generation for whom peace has been achieved at a high personal cost. A potential career in professional cricket ruined by a serious leg injury at the hands of the Nazis, he has enjoyed success as a playwright, but is resentful, condescending and prickly as an individual. Long suffering wife, Valerie Hobson, exasperated by his self pitying dirges and monotonous, in-depth diatribes on the workings of the criminal mind, has concluded that their marriage has run its course.

With meticulous attention to detail we are informed that the story begins 'on a road near Dartmoor Prison'. Even the newspaper headline revealing that three soldiers are on the run, would leave most readers turning to the back page for the football results. Needless to say, the lives of the escaped convicts and the unhappy couple become inextricably intertwined in what plays out as a minor league blueprint for The Desperate Hours. The three crooks can be categorized as hard nut (replete with American brogue), cheeky chappie and dumb guy. David Greene battles gamely to combine slow on the uptake with West Country, occasionally slipping into Cockney and even a touch of psuedo Yorkshire.

There appears to have been a deliberate attempt to minimize any worthwhile action. The road accident and shootings occur off camera. The only real animation being a woman's horrified facial expression upon discovering that washing had been stolen from her line. She must have thought that Arnold Layne had paid her a visit!

Much of The Small Voice comes off as simply laboured and plodding, with Hobson and Keel's professionalism just about carrying this largely listless affair.

Ah...this Boke bloke. Keel credited under his real name, Harold and making his screen debut, prior to finding success in musicals like Showboat and Calamity Jane. His only involvement with music here occurs when he recklessly wrecks a record which he finds objectionable. Now, if he EVER contemplated doing that to any of my Frank Zappa albums......

Taut little British suspense feature sees Howard Keel in his film debut (billed as Harold Keel). Boke (Keel) is having a bad day he's broken out of Dartmoor Prison, shot a cop, been in a car crash and now is in a hostage situation with unhappily married couple James Donald and Valerie Hobson. He has Donald who writes plays about crooks trying to get into his psyche, Hobson looking at him like he's trash, the kid upstairs screaming from meningitis and two useless fellow escapees plus its hot inside and we've got no electric fan (James Donald didn't think it worthwhile buying one). Howard Keel looks lean and imposing and every inch his over 6ft height. American born Keel was in England starring on stage in 'Oklahoma'. You can hear him singing 'the hangman song' on the record James Donald plays. His next film was the big budget MGM musical ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. Oddly enough Keel played another escaped prisoner in the British made FLOODS OF FEAR. Valerie Hobson was married to the film's producer Anthony Havelock-Allan and later married politician John Profumo but that's a whole other story !!!

I've just see this worthy film on Talking Pictures, Channel 81- and there appears to be a two-part version on YouTube. (Incidentally, IMDB puts the film's length at 67 minutes, but the YouTube offering runs to some 82 minutes, which is confirmed by other listings.)

At first the film was a bit talky and slow, but soon picked up and flowed along reasonably well. Like another IMBD reviewer, I was puzzled about how the three bad guys got guns (and how they'd got out of Dartmoor Prison). As to their getting different number plates, I'd assumed they were stolen from another vehicle.

Low budget, small cast, and most of the film took place inside the married couple's house. Harold/Howard Keel portrayed a chilling character, in contrast to the cheerful ones he often played as his career developed. Michael Balfour all but stole some scenes, playing to type as a criminal of limited intelligence. And Michael Hordern has a few lines to say on his way to become a recognizable face in so many British films.

The Small Voice surprised me. I only watched it out of curiosity as I saw it was Howard Keel's first movie that he was offered while in Britain appearing in London in Oklahoma! This was in 1948 when he was 29. I've been a fan since I was a child as my earliest memory of the movies is seeing Annie Get Your Gun when I was about 5 or 6. Here, Keel is one of three escaped convicts from Dartmoor prison who invade the home of James Donald and Valerie Hobson after an offer to help after their car crashes. The couple have been having marital problems, possibly caused by Donald's war experiences which has left him with an injured leg and bad memories. Hobson can't stand his self pity any more and threatens to leave him. To add to the trouble, two small children, also involved in the crash are rescued by one of the crooks and brought back to the house. The film noir feel is apparent throughout the picture and really felt authentic for a British film. Howard Keel is the dominant personality and very impressive in his first role as a brutal thug although watch out for redeeming qualities. This film proves, rather like his musical rival, Gordon MacRae who I thought was very good in The Return of the Frontiersman in 1950, that these two big voiced singers could have been fine actors had they been given good roles like Frank Sinatra was in From Here To Eternity.

A perennial situation that dates back at least as far as 'The Petrified Forest' and culminated in the section in 'A Clockwork Orange' when Alex and his droogs invade the home of a writer with an attractive wife to whom they proceed to help themselves (itself based on an incident during the wartime blackout in 1944 when Anthony Burgess's own wife was beaten and raped by three GI deserters). Although based on a novel originally published in 1940 and here updated to the postwar crime wave, by the time Burgess wrote his own novel a further ten years later he was thinking of teddy boys.

The fellow who makes his film debut as the chief hood was an American billed as 'Harold Keel' who had recently made a name for himself on the West End stage. He shows promise.