SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

PudgyPandaMan I wasn't particularly impressed with this movie, other than the cinematography. I was unfamiliar with any of the actors, although I think I had hear John Mills name before. So I came into with no preconceived ideas of their acting abilities or talents. While the actors seemed to portray their characters reasonably, I think it was more the lack of pace and excitement in the plot itself that was this film's flaw. I'm a big fan of mystery films, so I was expecting to be held in suspense and on the edge of my seat, but there was none of that here for me.Even though John Mills I'm sure is a decent actor, he seemed a little milquetoast in personality. Perhaps it was just the character's personality, but it made it hard for me to root for him.But I did really love the cinematography. It was quite beautiful. And I love the time period and seeing the old house and sets.

Jozef Kafka I first heard of this 1947 British film in one of Leslie Halliwell's books. Written by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Baker, it's kind of a British answer to Hollywod's noir, essentially a reworking of Grahame Greene's Ministry Of Fear. Chemist (and I do mean "chemist", not pharmacist or apothecary) John Mills blames himself for the death a friend's daughter in a bus crash, which also gives Mills a concussion and tendencies towards blackouts and amnesia. Quicker than you can say "Alfred Hitchcock" Mills is accused of murdering a fellow resident of his boarding house, and poor old John can't remember if he did it or not. What's most fascinating to me is the subtext -- Mills is clearly supposed to represent returning war veterans, but the film's makers were too afraid to have war wounds be the source of his blackouts (even though H'wood had already done it in The Blue Dahlia) and instead resorted to the bus crash contrivance. There is effective direction by Baker (who went to H'wood and made the classic 3D "depthie" Inferno, later returning to England to do A Night To Remember) and Ambler's script is good, with a few surprise scattered throughout.

David (Handlinghandel) The superb John Mills plays a man with a history of emotional imbalance. He moves into a rooming house peopled by the sorts who might be charming in a Barbara Pym novel. Here they are increasingly less charming: There's the classic nosy landlady. There's an elderly resident who begs for more coal on the fire: The way she's written to do this made me think of a leitmotif from an Eliot poem.There's a homely bachelor; there's an attractive young woman involved with a married man. And, there are assorted eccentrics thrown in as well.Mills meets Joan Greenwood, she of the dark, husky voice. And a murder takes place.That's all I will say, lest I give anything at all away: Try hard to see this little beauty of a film, knowing as little of the plot in advance as I did. Indeed, before today, I had never heard of it.If it were an American film of this period it would be called a film noir. It has all the elements but I don't think I'd call it one. It's a psychological thriller, a mystery.The secondary roles are cast superbly in every case. It's tense, filled with fascinating characters -- it lacks almost nothing. And the two stars could scarcely be better.

justincward Top class British entertainment of the old school, when the UK had a film industry. Atmospheric, edgy plot and direction (for 1947) thanks to Eric Ambler, and lots of period detail of character and setting that come from a world gone by. Plugging the iron into the light socket, for example. You'll laugh, but you'll be rooting for John Mills in the seedy lodging house full of dodgy salesmen, lingerie models and brigadiers' spinster daughters all the way. Mills is often a bit (literally) lightweight in leading roles, but here the character of a vulnerable, sensitive junior scientist fits like a glove. Well worth a rental.