An Inspector Calls (1954)

 "I don't know anything, not any more..."

I saw the original J.B. Priestley play in the West End, many moons ago, and it made a big impression on me. So much so that, having seen the play once, I was able to recall a surprising amount after a couple of decades, and predict what would happen next.

That is not, of course, to criticise the play, a trenchant commentary on the entitled and sometimes murderous arrogance of those who take their privilege for granted. The world, even in 2024, is full of Eva Smiths, and of Birlings who need taking down a peg or two.

The play suits adaptation to film well, with a number of flashbacks, and the largely character actor cast is solid, with Jane Wenham being particularly impressive. Yet Alastair Sim owns this film. He is menacing, magnetic, charisma itself: the quiet, otherwordly centre upon whom all things revolve. This is a career defining performance.

Guy Hamilton helms the film in a straightforward, unshowy manner, perhaps. Yet that is exactly what is needed here: directorial restraint. Simply using the words and the performances to carry the devastating story is exactly what is needed here. 

After this performance from Sim... it would surely take extreme bravery for anyone else to portray this part on film.It's a rare film which is elevated to greatness by one performance... but this is certainly one of them.

The Old Dark House (1932)

"Even Welsh doesn't sound like that!"

I've been somewhat remiss in leaving it until now, when I'm forty-two years old, to see this excellent film (who cares about some dodgy attempts at British accents?) which is not at all the different-film-studio-but-pretty-much-Universal-horror type film I expected, in spite of he present of James Whale and Boris Karloff and a fair few chills. This is no horror film.

No; beyond the superficial genre tropes is a substantial script from J.B. Priestley himself, the famed Yorkshire intellectual of the early twentieth century, with fascinating characters and very real-sounding dialogue which now, eighty-seven years after the film was released, brings the past to life in a way few old films can. These people may be from a different age but they feel very real from the argument in the first scene onwards.

The cast is wonderful. Yes, Karloff is wasted as the mute butler in a role similar to last year's Frankenstein, but Ernest Thesiger delights as the extremely camp Horace and Charles Laughton shines as the rich but tragic, and very northern, Sir William. The cast is a collection of grotesques and sympathetic individuals, but it's the characters and cast, rather than the almost non-existent plot, that makes this film sing with atmosphere, pathos, danger and tension, in spite of the Charlotte Bronte madman in the attic. And at the centre of it all is the visionary and magnificent James Whale.