There Is Another Sun

Wall of Death, or There is Another Sun is a 1951 film directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Maxwell Reed, Laurence Harvey, and Susan Shaw.

Reed plays Racer, probably a fake name, who is actually a motorcycle racer; Harvey is his boxer friend Maguire. Both are involved with the local carnival, which features them, and both are nterested in the same woman, a dancer, Lilian (Susan Shaw).

Racer is unscrupulous and involves Maguire in his chicanery. Though Maguire is warned not to get mixed up with him, he is obsessively loyal and wants to be a good friend. However, Racer pulls Maguire into deeper and deeper crime.

The star of the film is the wonderful carnival atmosphere, on the seedy side, with its carousel and hilarious fortune teller played by Hermoine Baddeley.

There is some great footage of cycling around a tall, round wall, as well as a prize fight. Otherwise it's a dull and talky film, and one thinks Maguire, rather than being a loyal friend, is an idiot. Harvey is very young here.

Susan Shaw, the object of the affections of both men, is lovely.

Maxwell Reed was Joan Collins' first husband, and I gather about as nice as he appears in this.

Laurence Harvey is a tank fighter for Leslie Dwyer in a traveling carnival; Maxwell Reed is his pal, and a daredevil motorcycle rider in the same show. Susan Shaw is a chorus line dancer who falls in with them. Harvey is the man she has set her cap at, but Reed has some less-than-legal plans that keep drawing Harvey into danger, especially when policeman Meredith Edwards comes by, knowing more than he can prove; but of course all the carny folk close ranks against him.

There's a good deal of atmosphere in ths tale of carny life, and a sense of depression hangs over the production, especially when the audience can hear the cheery music of the calliope. There's a sense of alienation from the happy crowds that come in for a show, hoping that Harvey will have his brains spattered in a fight, or Reed killed in a stunt gone wrong. Can the men get out of this movie alive, and out of prison? With Hermione Baddeley, Earl Cameron, Eric Pohlmann, and Laurence Naismith.

No film with Maxwell Reed can be all bad. The director even used his height as a plot point - how can he hide in a crowd? Racer (Wall of Death) and Maguire (boxer) pick up Lilian (Susan Shaw) in a dodgy nightclub where they gamble away their savings. Racer wants to get back on the Speedway track, while Maguire wants to make it as a boxer. Meanwhile he falls in love with Lilian, but fears she has a thing for racer. The gruff trainer meanwhile is in love with the fortune teller - played to great effect by the wonderful Hermione Baddeley. "Your kabbalistic number is 69 and your lucky colour is blue - you're a Scorpio, I can tell!" The real star is the seedy background of the fair, the vans, and the grubby boarding house where Lilian is staying with a girlfriend - their show has closed and they're on their uppers. They still existed, with their Victorian furniture, in the 60s and 70s.

There seem to be a large number of these types of film produced in the fifties and sixties in the UK. They always seemed to have a very obvious villain and very obvious good guys, usually the only difference between the films would be the background setting. This is a good example of this type of movie because it's set in a rather run-down fairground populated by stereo-typical fairground types - the heart-of-gold fortune-teller, the gruff but kind boxing promoter, the naive up-and-coming boxer and the shady character riding the Wall of Death. Maxwell Reed plays 'Racer' the archetypal kid from the wrong side of the tracks with an unknown past and a huge chip on his shoulder. Laurence Harvey plays the gullible but likable 'Mag' Maguire who idolises 'Racer' despite the latter wearing the heaviest eye shadow seen on film.

I've always had a soft spot for these types of low-budget films because they seem to capture a snapshot of a post-war Britain that is long gone. The plot is predictable but enjoyable nonetheless.

All three of the young leads in this movie died young within five years of each other during the 1970s. A bleak trawl of the lower depths recalling 'Nightmare Alley', it teams two of postwar British cinema's most saturnine bad boys and biggest quiffs, of whom only Maxwell Reed is deemed incapable of redemption (although Laurence Harvey's hero-worshipping of him does seem to go beyond mere admiration).

Wilkie Cooper's superb photography goes some way towards making the basic squalor of the subject palatable, while the supposedly poky little room unemployed 'showgirl' Susan Shaw rents looks luxuriously spacious by 21st Century standards.