An interesting film that makes a good deal out of a slight scenario. It is only 72 minutes long (out of which the Americans contrived to cut a full twenty minutes for the US release, with disastrous effect) and a good proportion of even that slim running time consists of wordless shots. Greville's claim was that he had used 'silent movie technique', and in fact when you see this picture that style is very recognisable: one frequent trick is to cut from a shot of one object (e.g. a milk bottle being put down on the doorstep) to another object (e.g. a wine bottle being put down in a restaurant) at precisely the same shape and angle -- I found this a little too obvious as a transit from one scene to another, but it's clearly a stylistic decision. A classic silent movie technique is seen in the way that the scene of the girl falling in love is shown as a montage of the couple together throughout the evening, as the camera swirls around the room and the shadow of the singer on the dance floor is overlaid to what will, later in the story, be recalled as "their" song.
The plot is simple but pleasantly unexpected, at least by modern conventions; in the 1930s it may have been a less striking ending. (It is interesting to see a depiction in this era of a 'career woman' obviously struggling with being relegated to domesticity, although this is one element that the plot doesn't really resolve.) The sets (the lab, the 'country house', the pub) look distinctly familiar from other 1930s productions -- although this may simply mean that they were true to life! -- but skillful use is made of the limited space; oddly enough it is the 'external' sequences that look either stagy or simply cut out of stock footage. The film is brought to life with touches of humour, both visual and verbal, and we are allowed to care about all the characters, even poor jealous dried-up Martha.
The three principals are all very good (Miss Travers gives an amusing example of acting 'bad acting' as her character tries to lie to her husband, but is otherwise note-perfect on what could have come across as melodramatic dialogue); Hugh Williams is perhaps the weakest, but then his character is ultimately little more than a cipher to trigger the action. Among the supporting cast, Renee Gadd stood out for me in her handful of early scenes as the heroine's world-weary best friend, while Norman Pierce is somewhat over the top in his comedy part of Mine Host at the country inn.
This is a B-movie with artistic aspirations, which on the whole succeed. It scores on the pared-down script and cinematography fronts, and in particular for its attention to unspoken detail: it is not a great picture, was never aimed to be one and will never be one, but it is memorable among its kind. A solid 7/10, which sometimes reaches to be an 8.
