It's a movie about war-time Britain released in 1949 but it's in no way a typical "British war movie". (Some of them were real gems.) This one has David Ferrar as an anti-demolition expert, part of a team that operates in a small room in the back. He doesn't wear a uniform. He has a tin leg. And he's in a state of constant torment.
I had no idea where the movie was going. At first, I expected a kind of British "Hurt Locker," with Ferrar going about an dismantling bombs one after another, always cursing and wondering if he should cut the red wire or the green wire. It's not like that at all. Ferrar only disarms one booby-trapped device in a tense scene at the end. It's well done.
But then if Ferrar doesn't constantly investigate and defuse bombs, what's the movie about? Well, it's like this. He has a slight problem with the bottle in that when he gets juiced up he's mean and destructive. He also has a problem with the bureaucracy of which he's part -- mostly incompetent, groveling, and designing. Then there's this woman, Kathleen Byron, who loves him and maybe he loves her but he's too sour to admit it. It doesn't even help when he dresses him down for his bitterness and shouts at him to "stop feeling sorry for yourself!" He finally gets his act together after removing the fangs from that beachfront booby trap while hung over and shaky.
At the beginning, to demonstrate their relationship, Byron and Ferrar are alone in his apartment, they have an expositional conversation about his tin leg and what he does to ease its discomfort. The scene ends with Byron running to him and their clasping each other in their arms while lying on the couch. Dissolve. When I was a child I always thought that she returned to her own apartment across the hall when a scene ended like this.
Byron has haunted eyes that stare out from under her upper lids and her other features -- her jaw, her nose, her tiny lips -- all seem to point to a particular spot in front of her mouth, about a cigarette's length. If you haven't seen Kathleen Byron go mad in "Black Narcissus," you might want to try it.
The same writers and directors -- Powell and Pressburger -- are responsible for this film and it shows. There are more than the usual number of dramatic close ups. And when Ferrar is alone in his dark apartment, trying to fight the desire to hit that bottle of Scotch on the table, the camera angles and lighting first get weird and then hallucinatory.
The imagery gets too bizarre in that scene. Also they've done a little miscasting. Jack Hawkins is a grinning, glad-handing, money-grubbing phony -- a repulsive character. But Jack Hawkins is no phony. He's a voice of authority and a paragon of common sense. Don't try to pull the wool over this boy's eyes. But those two points aside, it's put together well considering the multiple sub plots. And that bomb being emasculated is a teeth grinder.
I had no idea where the movie was going. At first, I expected a kind of British "Hurt Locker," with Ferrar going about an dismantling bombs one after another, always cursing and wondering if he should cut the red wire or the green wire. It's not like that at all. Ferrar only disarms one booby-trapped device in a tense scene at the end. It's well done.
But then if Ferrar doesn't constantly investigate and defuse bombs, what's the movie about? Well, it's like this. He has a slight problem with the bottle in that when he gets juiced up he's mean and destructive. He also has a problem with the bureaucracy of which he's part -- mostly incompetent, groveling, and designing. Then there's this woman, Kathleen Byron, who loves him and maybe he loves her but he's too sour to admit it. It doesn't even help when he dresses him down for his bitterness and shouts at him to "stop feeling sorry for yourself!" He finally gets his act together after removing the fangs from that beachfront booby trap while hung over and shaky.
At the beginning, to demonstrate their relationship, Byron and Ferrar are alone in his apartment, they have an expositional conversation about his tin leg and what he does to ease its discomfort. The scene ends with Byron running to him and their clasping each other in their arms while lying on the couch. Dissolve. When I was a child I always thought that she returned to her own apartment across the hall when a scene ended like this.
Byron has haunted eyes that stare out from under her upper lids and her other features -- her jaw, her nose, her tiny lips -- all seem to point to a particular spot in front of her mouth, about a cigarette's length. If you haven't seen Kathleen Byron go mad in "Black Narcissus," you might want to try it.
The same writers and directors -- Powell and Pressburger -- are responsible for this film and it shows. There are more than the usual number of dramatic close ups. And when Ferrar is alone in his dark apartment, trying to fight the desire to hit that bottle of Scotch on the table, the camera angles and lighting first get weird and then hallucinatory.
The imagery gets too bizarre in that scene. Also they've done a little miscasting. Jack Hawkins is a grinning, glad-handing, money-grubbing phony -- a repulsive character. But Jack Hawkins is no phony. He's a voice of authority and a paragon of common sense. Don't try to pull the wool over this boy's eyes. But those two points aside, it's put together well considering the multiple sub plots. And that bomb being emasculated is a teeth grinder.