Fri 4 Mar 2011
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: INTERRUPTED JOURNEY (1949).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[20] Comments
INTERRUPTED JOURNEY. British Lion, UK, 1949. Valerie Hobson, Richard Todd, Christine Norden, Tom Walls, Ralph Truman, Vida Hope, Alexander Gauge. Screenplay: Michael Pertwee. Director: Daniel Birt.
Interrupted Journey is sort of a PG version of Fatal Attraction and a film I recommend to any man thinking of cheating on his wife.
Richard Todd plays a struggling young writer whose wife wants him to get a job. He elects to run off with a wealthy married woman who flatters him, but as they’re preparing to leave he finds himself persecuted by doubts, nagging conscience, and the strange feeling they’re being followed.
They board a train that happens to pass close by his house and, on impulse, he pulls the Emergency Cord, stops the train and flees back to his wife. But then…
Well, again, it’s one of those films so full of surprising twists that I hate to tell any more. Suffice it to say that the screenwriters turn Todd’s aborted fling into a finely-honed paranoid nightmare, well-played by a bunch of folks I never heard of, and produced with that quiet, comfortable, sumptuous care typical of post-war British films at their best.
There is, incidentally, a scene in Interrupted Journey that caught my attention for reasons I’ll discuss next time: It’s that moment that comes in about every third thriller ever made, where the Hero’s accused of Murder, the Police are coming for him, and he convinces the Heroine (in this case his doubting wife) to hide him.
It’s done here with more intelligence than usual, and a real feeling for the poor wife’s tortured struggle with herself over how far she ought to trust her punic husband.
March 4th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
I saw this British noir a couple years ago on a bootleg dvd. Very well done with a dark and moody atmosphere but I remember the ending as being a disappointment.
March 4th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
By the way, I just looked on the Internet Movie Data Base and Valerie Hobson was the wife of minister John Profumo who was involved in the big Christine Keeler sex scandal in Britain.
Due to my love of movies, I find myself checking Imdb.com just about every day to look up facts and opinions about films. Before the internet I was at the mercy of my film books which often would have nothing at all about the more obscure and forgotten movies.
March 5th, 2011 at 5:21 am
I think most of the critics agree with Walker about the ending of this one — which worked much better as the sly joke at the end of Fritz Lang’s SCARLET STREET than here where it is unsatisfying — but up to that point a really good movie.
Hobson’s notable film career was mostly over by the time of the Profumo scandal, but in this period she was one of the most able and successful British leading ladies.
Todd was one of the more popular British leading men of the era, and of course British producers always hoped his status as an Oscar winner for THE HASTY HEART would help to sell his films in the US.
He died relatively young, I think one of his last films, THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN. He’s also in the “Monkey’s Paw” segment of the anthology film TALES FROM THE CRYPT.
Screenwriter Michael Pertwee was one of the notable Pertwee theatrical clan that included novelist, actor, and screenwriter Roland (himself a third or more generation theatrical presence), Jon Pertwee (the third Doctor on Doctor Who), and Jon’s son Sean (DOG SOLDIERS).
March 5th, 2011 at 7:36 am
I’ll always remember Valerie Hobson for her stints as hapless heroines in early Universal flicks like BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and WEREWoLF OF LONDON. Nice to see her here almost 20 years later still looking peachy.
March 5th, 2011 at 8:38 am
I’m sure David meant to say “Oscar nominee” rather than “Oscar winner” up there.
March 5th, 2011 at 10:23 am
Well, he should have won, still, the point was there weren’t that many British nominees of that age and able to play leading men in British films at that point — Todd got a good deal of work out of that not to mention he chose to stay in Europe unlike bigger names like Mason and Granger. He had some notable big roles including DAM BUSTERS for a time there.
March 5th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Walker, the IMdb is the wikipedia of film/TV databases. It is a good source but not perfect. For old movies the best source is tcmdb.com. Besides the usual information, tcmdb.com often has the original trailers, reviews of the film from that era, and great extras.
March 5th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Michael is right about the possibility of errors on IMDB.com. However they do list TV series credits for the actors which TCMdb doesn’t. Plus IMDB links with amazon.com which often heavily discounts dvds or has third party sellers with inexpensive copies. TCMdb links to dvds that are higher priced.
But I still also look at TCMdb and TCM just about every day also. Each morning when I get up, one of the first things I do is check for the daily TCM movie schedule. Yesterday I watched one of my very favorite film noirs on TCM, NOBODY LIVES FOREVER, starring John Garfield. Today at 5:30 the schedule shows the 1960 western CIMERRON, which is not that good but still has a great beginning as the Oklahoma strip land rush starts in 1889.
March 5th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Back in Comment #4, Dan refers to Valerie Hobson looking peachy here, which I assume means the film, not the two images I used to illustrate the review.
I could be wrong, and I often am, but the blonde in those two photos is the woman our hero is running off with, played by Christine Norden, described by IMDB as “Britain’s first notorious post-war sex siren.”
Assuming IMDB to be correct in this regard, they go on to say that “She scored history of sorts as the first actress to appear topless on Broadway in the 1967 production of SCUBA DUBA.”
I missed that one.
March 5th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Walker, you compared IMDB and tcmdb well. And you are right, the internet is heaven for us research fans.
During my research for the TV reviews here I found some errors in those TV episodes indexes. Such as the number of episodes a character appears in the series. TV.com is my backup, but I still search for a more reliable database site. Luckily the source material still exists.
I apologize to all for taking this topic off subject.
March 5th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
No need to apologize! These comments often go in directions I would never have thought of when I post a review, and always for the better.
It’s been a slow year for TCM for me. I know I didn’t tape anything from there in Oscar month, and not much in January either.
But March is a different story. I skipped the John Garfield films yesterday, but so far today I’ve taped Storm in a Teacup (1937) with Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison, and To the Shores of Tripoli (1942) with John Payne, Maureen O’Hara and Randolph Scott.
Walker mentioned Cimarron (1960) coming up next. I’ve seen the long Land Rush scene many times, but never the end of the movie. I don’t imagine anything that happens afterward can compare.
March 5th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
I think Todd may be best known in the States, besides for The Hasty Heart, for the Hitchcock film Stage Fright, the WW2 film The Damn Busters and the religious film A Man Called Peter.
He died in 2009 though, actually, according to imdb, at the age of 90.
The film reviewed by Dan can be purchased through DVD-on-demand from Sinister Classics, which does a lot of decent little British thrillers and mysteries.
March 5th, 2011 at 6:26 pm
One more DVD in my Amazon cart won’t matter, will it. Thanks, Curt.
Doing a search on Amazon, I found just over a thousand Sinister Cinema DVDs offered for sale there. At $8.99 each, that’s not bad, if your taste is the same as theirs.
By the way, thanks to Dan for the word for the day: “punic.”
My spellchecker doesn’t know it, but I do, now.
March 5th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Steve in comment #11 says he has seen the land rush scene in CIMERRON many times but never the end of the movie. I have had the same experience and the reason we have not seen the end of the movie is because it is a terrible, turgid, silly movie after the land rush excitement. Once again, I had to give up around an hour in the movie. Not Anthony Mann’s finest hour as a director(I’ve heard the suits took the movie away from his control) and Glenn Ford is not having a good time. I guess the 1931 version is really the better one.
March 5th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Being here in the Cimarron strip the movie has a nice familiar feel to it (there is a life size monument to the Land Rush scattered over much of the area just east and south of downtown). The Mann version isn’t bad, it just has trouble comparing to the Richard Dix/Irene Dunne version.
And to give CIMARRON its Mystery File connection (other than Anthony Mann) the lead character Yancy Cravatt is based on the life of attorney, pioneer, and gunfighter Temple Houston (ironically Richard Dix who played Yancy in the early film also played Sam in MAN OF CONQUEST), son of Sam Houston and also hero of a short lived television western/mystery series with Jeffrey Hunter which bore his name.
Houston was almost as colorful as his father, among other things it was his killing of Al Jenning’s brother in a gunfight that propelled Al Jennings (AL JENNINGS OF OKLAHOMA with Dan Duryea) to become an outlaw — before he reformed, did his time, and went farther west to become a Hollywood producer.
But his most famous role was as criminal defense attorney. When a local saloon girl was accussed of murder and put on trial for her life Houston took the case. His summation, in which he alledgedly coined the phrase ‘she’s only a bird in a gilded cage,’ was so masterful it was taught for decades as the perfect summation before a jury (dramatised in both versions of CIMARRON)in many standard law courses and reprinted at the time in newspapers across the country verbatim.
As might be suspected he won. After his death the former saloon girl placed fresh flowers on his grave regularly until her own death.
And not to give anything too much away, but the movie ends with statehood and the discovery of oil. Which other than the odd tornado or terrorist attack is about the last time anything of interest happened in Oklahoma other than Gene Autry, James Garner, or Dale Robertson being born here.
As for the Land Rush, while the one in CIMARRON is well staged it pales before the one in William S. Hart’s TUMBLEWEEDS. There’s also a nice version in the unintentionally hilarious Jimmy Cagney/Humphrey Bogart western THE OKLAHOMA KID.
Also, if memory serves me (and it does less often than it once did) the Russ Tamblyn character in CIMARRON was very loosely based on the life of the ‘good outlaw,’ Bill Doolin.
March 7th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
“Sinister Classics” I’ve purchased:
The Hidden Room (Robert Newton)
Circle of Danger (Ray Milland)
The Frightened Lady (Felix Aylmer)
The Riverside Murder (Alastair Sim)
Do You Know This Voice? (Dan Duryea)
Like Steve said, there are a zillion of ’em!
March 7th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Sinister Cinema has a website where you can order all sorts of B-movies: sinistercinema.com. A few years ago I went through a period where I ordered hundreds of B-westerns from the 1920’s through 1940’s. Also a ton of forgotten horrors, B-mysteries, etc. Price was around $9 or $10 each. They still have movies available on Vhs or dvd, your choice. I never had a problem with the dvds and they issue a catalog every year or so. They specialize in the bizarre and unusual.
March 8th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
If you are going to look on Sinister Cinema for great Brit movies, don’t limit yourself to the mystery sections. Under science fiction they have the great Britih thriller NON STOP NEW YORK directed by Robert Stevenson (MARY POPPINS, JANE EYRE) with John Loder, Anna Lee, and Francis Sullivan, a terrific thriller set on a luxury futuristic flying clipper traveling from London to New York.
You’ll also find CALLING PAUL TEMPLE and a couple of the Hammer DICK BARTON films — entertaining British B fare, and the Ronald Colman/Loretta Young/Warner Oland BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKE BACK, one of the best mystery comedies from the thirties with a cast that includes Charles Butterworth, Ona Munson, Sir C. Aubrey Smith, and Mischa Auer. It’s a nice print of a once lost film.
Also check out POSTMARK FOR DANGER with Robert Beatty and Terry Moore, based on the Francis Durbridge radio and televsison serial (PORTRAIT IF ALISON) and his novel, a solid little mystery film.
Also EYE WITNESS directed by and starring Robert Montgomery as an American attorney defending a friend in England on trial for murder. Solid cast including Felix Alymer and Leslie Banks and nice setup with Montgomery a fish out of water in the British legal system hunting for the real killer.
HALFWAY HOUSE is a fantasy film on the OUTWARD BOUND model with Mervyn Johns and Glynis Johns as the proprieter and his daughter of a very odd little inn.
And finally HUE AND CRY one of the great British crime comedies of all time with Alistair Sim as a growling grumpy and misoginistic writer of pulp stories for boys roped into crime busting when a youth and his friends discover a gang of crooks are using a code in the stories in their crime spree. It’s one of the classic Ealing Studio comedies and Sim a delight as always.
March 8th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Re Richard Todd — let’s see, I gave him an Oscar and killed him early. I think I’m even on that score.
He also did one of my favorite little suspense films, LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE with Ruth Roman, Zachary Scott, Mercedes McCambridge, and Darrel Hickman. It’s a kinky little outing directed by King Vidor, and as much Gothic as noir with McCambridge
and Scott’s performances worth the entire film.
May 10th, 2017 at 4:27 am
I bumped into Richard Todd at Grantham railway station about 10 years ago. He was waiting for a train or meeting someone. I didn’t have the nerve to speak to him.