THE OCTOBER MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 477, 13 August 1948, Page 24

THE OCTOBER MAN

(Rank-Two Cities) | i. HOSE who have come to ex- | pect the ultimate in thrills | from Eric Ambler may be a little disappointed with The October Man, his first venture as -an author-producer, but I thought it on the whole a reasonably promising beginning. It is certainly not out of the top drawer; there are occasional banalities of dialogue and dircction, and some of the sets are too palpably mock-ups, but the plot is a good one and if the thrills are not so thrilling and the climaxes not quite so climactic as some would wish there is a compensatory inorease in realism and_ verisimilitude. What marks the film out from the general run of thrillers (if, indeed, one can properly place it in that category) is that it is for the most part quite believable, When one comes to think it over, however, The October Man appears as a blend of several story-forms. It could be classified with the murder mysteries, since there is a mystesious murder in it. Like Frieda, it is algo a psychological study concerned with a guilt-complex and the mental disequilibrium which derives from it. But it will appeal most, I think, as the story of an innocent man caught hand and foot in the toils of circumstantial evidence, and tormented -by the persistent questions of the police and the whispers of his neigh-bours-to the point of doubting his own sanity. This situation is contrived so neatly, the hunt closes in with such seeming inevitability, that one becomes too preoccupied with the possible miscarriage of justice to complain at the relatively prosaic ending. The October Man is not brilliantly acted, but there is an above-average competence shown by all members of the cast and the blemishes which mar one or two performances are as much the faults of the story or the direction as of the players. In particular I noticed a tendency to repetitiousness in some small matters of detail. John Mills, the young industrial chemist whose neuroses and misfortunes provide the plot-material, holds his bewildered head_ too much, hears just too many trainwhistles, kisses Joan Greenwood just ence or twice too often. At least the audience seemed to think so, for on one or two occasions the tension or tenderness of a scene was broken by a-spatter of laughter-and not the involuntary nervous laughter with which most filmgoers are familiar. Not that I blame John Mills for these slight backslidings -least of all for the superfluous clinches -since these are matters for the director to decide. No doubt there is a formula somewhere which lays down the proper incidence for such brief encounters, but it seemed that neither Mr. Ambler nor his director (Roy Baker) had got hold of it, Disregarding these minor matters I found John Mills well cast. He gives one the impression of being a serious and painstaking young man, and in the

part of a serious young man with hypertrophy of the conscience he seemed completely at home. Joan Greenwood’s acting I always enjoy. Her delightful accent prejudices me in her favour, I admit, but there is also a quality of emotion in repose about her which I find piquant and intriguing. Out of about a score of minor players there was hardly one who did not do well, the best being Catherine Lacey as the faded Miss Selby, Frederick Piper as_ the bland police inspector who is so sure that he has an open-and-shut case, and Edward Chapman in the character of the mysterious Mr. Peachey. But the best supporting work was done, in my opinion, by the property-men who devised the boarding-house in which much of the action takes place. It is so true to type that I could almost smell the cabbage-water.