User Reviews

There's a moment that seems to sum up the emotional tonus of this story of Commie espionage in London. Anthony Bushell has been sent undercover by Scotland Yard to investigate some avant-garde musical society that seems somehow connected to a terrible explosion at the docks.

When the chief Scotland Yard investigator, Redmond, initially asks Bushell if he has any interest in music, Bushell replies dead-pan, "Why, do you need help moving a piano?"

Bushell, undercover, attends a meeting of the society after joining it, and he sits in the audience, arms folded, while the speaker introduces a piece for a string trio that was the composer's "first effort -- and also his last." Yes, the music they play is very dramatic, the speaker tells us, but underneath there is lyricism and "some jolly good tunes."

On stage, the trio launch into a lugubrious cascade of clashing chords that might sound appropriate if you were watching some kind of pop version of Dracula while on mushrooms. It dissolves your basilar membranes. It fuses your middle ear. The two violins moan and the cellist is going ape, throwing his hair wildly around. Well, Bushell has a face that's about as interesting as a hard-boiled egg, but his features twist into first horror, then disbelief as the flood of dissonance flows on and he rest of the audience sits rapt. I found the scene hilarious, and it didn't strike me as an imitation of Hitchcock in any way.

The whole movie is like that. The events are serious indeed -- Soviet agents at work blowing up London -- but the dialog is quick and witty and layered over with a kind of strictly British humor -- or I should say "humour" -- that's hard to define. When the inspectors unexpectedly discover a murdered spy, one of them glances at it and says, "Hello."

You never find this sort of stuff on "Law and Order" but you can find good examples in films like "Mona Lisa." And, though there are wisecracks in abundance in most American cop movies, they sound hyperbolic and slightly coarse.

I'm skipping over the plot because, like most espionage and spy thrillers, it's pretty complicated. Men in overcoats following suspicious women in heels across city streets. Basically, it's a story of Redmond, Morrell, Bushell, and the rest incrementally pinning down the Red Menace, who might as well be gangsters as far as the dynamics are concerned. Some of the heavies are rough guys, some are pathetic sissies, a clerk in a bowler looks like T. S. Eliot, and the one at the top is suavely evil -- not much originality there. It's a serious movie. The Reds are all bastards. They kill one another without remorse if it moves the cause one step forward.

The performances are all fine, except when the actors are hobbled by stereotypical roles. There's nothing special about the direction but the climactic confrontation is agreeably noirish -- all those wet cobblestone streets glistening under the lamps -- and the shoot out is well staged and exciting.

After a big explosion in the London Docks, Scotland Yard and MI5 join forces to find the ones responsible. Meanwhile the bombers, a group of communists, set their eyes on a much larger target, several power stations around the country, including London's Battersea power station. The group have enlisted a weakling shop seller as one of their helpers, but he slowly starts to crumble and fall apart. Meanwhile the investigators go over each lead and are slowly able to identify members of the group. But they don't know when the next attack will be or where.

A Cold War thriller that starts with a bang and ends with a big finale inside Battersea power station. By shifting the focus back and forth between the investigators and the Communist group (which is never mentioned directly, but strongly implied), including the moments where their paths cross, the movie maintains tension and suspense. The cast isn't too well-known but contains a ton of familiar British character actors, from the lead detectives, Liam Redmond ('Night of the Demon') and André Morell ('The Bridge on the River Kwai') to the leader of the group, John Bailey ('Never Let Go') to Geoffrey Keen (Sir Frederick Gray in half a dozen James Bond movies) and so on.

Directed and co-written by Roy Boulting, one half of the Boulting brothers ('Brighton Rock', 'Seven Days to Noon'), and with future acclaimed cinematographer Gilbert Taylor behind the camera ('Star Wars', 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'), this movie is expertly made. It's got a nice pace to it, and by mixing interior studio sets and exterior on-location shots in London, as well as inside Battersea power station, the movie also looks pretty nice. It's not a classic by any means, but hard to go wrong with this one.

I saw this film earlier on TV never having seen it or heard of it before..

Although the story of a group of militants causing mayhem and fear in British industry is more reminiscent of an episode of The Avengers (where instead of MI5 the protagonists would be pursued by John Steed and Emma Peel), there are some quite interesting things that surprised me.

Although WW2 had only finished just six years prior to this films release, the film depicts to dark forces trying to radicalise some sections of the British workforce into doing acts of sabotage to further their political infuence. The film may not state communist Russia by name by it strongly alludes to it.

The other interesting concept in the script is that the integrity of a fictional MP is questioned. In 1951 that must have been quite a bold thing to do in a British film. Accusing a member of Parliament of being anything but loyal to the UK must have broken new ground. So while the story itself may now look a little dated, there is something quite brave in the message. In some ways this film almost pre-empts McCarthyism but with a British twist. The film does try to put it in context of the working class struggle after all they had done to help the country in the war, and the film does also try and distance the workers unions from the trouble, but it also seems to be flagging the dangers of the influence of subversive foreign powers on British politics and life.

Anyway I certainly found it an interesting watch and quite unusual for its time. IT was also fun to see a youngish Geoffrey Keen amongst the cast (thirty years before he took over from Bernard Lee as 007's boss).

The physical war was over but a Cold War began, and for this follow-up to "Seven Days to Noon", a classic British thriller, it's more tense hours as London power plants are targeted, the lifeline of the city. André Morell repeats his role as a special agent from "Seven Days to Noon", and is joined by Liam Redmond in the attempts to target three in London and five others throughout the country. Who better to Target to get them involved in this plot but the vulnerable college students who grew up feeling a world at war and now only want peace? It's a frightening way to get it, but these enemies are manipulative and strong willed.

Poor Joan Hickson is the long suffering mother who finds out that her youngest son, Kenneth Griffith, is involved in this conspiracy, Patric Doonan impenetrable to such nonsense. The scene skips between the special agents and the enemies, and it's an intense journey from the explosion in the opening scene that then follows with busy days in London where regular folks go out about their business not realizing the impending danger that lurks around them.

The film is very complex and intellectual, as if in the know a real plots that were somehow stopped. This combination of film noir and social political thriller is brilliant with outstanding photography, great writing and unintended spacing among the wonderful acting. British stage legend Dora Bryan provides some light-hearted comedy as a typical matron oblivious to everything but her own existence. Very well done, and a definite classic in the genre a post-war realism that the British film industry did very well.

British historian Lord Hennessey says in his book on 1950s Britain that this is a bad film not in tune with the era it is set in.

I must disagree. Britain had a left of centre government 1945-1951 but it was an anti communist government.

Britain played a big role in the creation of NATO and in the Korean war.

Hennessy and other critics of this film say it is over the top because Britain never was threatened by a strong communist movement,but maybe the communists were foiled by the well organised MI5 and Special Branch as seen in the film.

Of course there is no evidence of overt subversion as seen in the film,but in France and Italy the stronger communist movements did use illegal methods to promote strikes and violence in the period this film is set in.

I say again,this is a great film,great location work,great acting and the use of front organisations is well explained.

The centre of the film is a shabby little electrical components and radio shop, owned by Joan Hickson, and staffed by her two sons. From their shabby kitchen, with its Edwardian bamboo whatnots and family photos, son Kenneth Griffith gets involved with a gang of high-minded communists who use an avant-garde music society as a front. (Who wrote the musical samples?)

The war is over, and there are new enemies - never named. And new allies, in the person of Commander Brennan, a very obvious Irishman from south of the border. Griffith becomes increasingly nervous as the "music-lovers" harrass him, a former contact is stabbed, and he realises he's had a part in an attack on the docks in which several men died, including a friend.

Yes, it's Hitchcockian, with the gleaming halls of the House of Commons featuring instead of Westminster Cathedral, as poor Griffith confesses all to quite the wrong man. He ends up imprisoned at the top of a tutorial college - another front organisation, guarded by a lackadaisical intellectual who's manning the hidden radio. In another scene this bespectacled swot insists on calling enemies of the movement "bourgeois deviationists".

It is truly suspenseful, and Joan Hickson gives an affecting performanc in a far larger role than her usual cameo. Dora Bryan pops in wearing outrageous hats and providing comic relief.

Also affording a few laughs are the "telephone repair men" sent by the security services to check out the college. "Can you hear me, mother?" was a catchphrase of the day.