THE LONG MEMORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 17

THE LONG MEMORY

(Rank-Europa) OBERT HAMER, who made Kind Hearts and Coronets, is the director of this slow-paced English melodrama adapted from a novel by Howard Clewes. It tells the story of a man who is imprisoned for 12 years for a murder he didn’t commit, and who devotes himself after his release to tracking down those whose lies led to his conviction. The film is set mainly on the barges and mud-flats of the Thames River, where the released prisoner carries out his long and lonely pursuit of revenge. The desolate stretches of sand and water, rather similar to those in the opening scenes of Great Expectations, provide the opportunity for some ‘evocative photography by Harry Waxman, but the human elements in the tale are presented with less convincing rea‘ism. John Mills gives a solid yet sensitive portrayal as the released prisoner, and Eva Bergh is good as the refugee girl who falls in love with him. John McCallum as a Scotland Yard officer and Elizabeth Sellars as his wife are not so good, but the director has compensated for this weakness by intelligent handling of his theme of flight and capture. The moral of the picture-a pretty old one-is explicitly stated by John Mills in one line of the occasionally creaky dialogue: "When you.come to the point revenge isn’t worth it." Especially, you might say, when there are such alternatives around as the attractive Miss Bergh.