Hell Is Sold Out

One of those films that dealt - perhaps neither deliberately nor directly - with sorting out the muddle of war, and so a very distant relation of The Return of Martin Guerre as much as The Captive Heart. It was Lom's attempt at playing a romantic hero, and it didn't come off; he's too saturnine and grumpy. But artistically this has an upside, as it leaves us unsure whether the heroine will go for him or the more puppy-like, and more British, Attenborough. Alas, it all needs the Lubitsch touch, or at least the Michael Powell one; instead, it's wobbly in tone, shuffling between romance, comedy, farce and the odd echo of the war (Attenborough has blackouts caused by shrapnel in his head), along with some lame satire of Americans. It isn't bad - and it looks great, with high-contrast mono photography - but it isn't very good either.