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Margaret Lockwood is "The Girl in the News" as a nurse who is acquitted of murder, only to find herself accused again. Carol Reed directed, and besides Lockwood, it stars Emlyn Williams and Roger Livesey. Lockwood is Anne Graham, a young nurse working in a household when her invalid employer takes too many sleeping pills. Graham is accused of murder but acquitted. However, she finds getting a job impossible until she changes her name. Someone mails her a classified ad for a nursing job, for which she applies and is accepted. Then history repeats itself.

A very good film, excellently directed by Reed with an underplayed performance by Lockwood. Emlyn Williams plays her attorney. Though I figured this film out before the plot unfolded, "The Girl in the News" is still good and worth seeing.

A young nurse who has been acquitted of poisoning her employer manages to find work under another name - and is accused of murder, by the same method, a second time. We know the guilty parties well in advance, and the solution of the crime by the nurse's attorney owes more to luck and intuition than to detection. There's no chase scene, no romance, not a great deal of suspense. From Carol Reed, the same director who made "Night Train to Munich", "Odd Man Out" and "The Third Man", this is a remarkably bland film. Still, it's very smoothly made, everything is focused on the story line, and the acting is uniformly excellent. It's a solid, professional piece of work (and I know that sounds like damning with faint praise), and while there's no urgent reason to see it more than once, it's certainly worth seeing once.

Core to the plot is the extent to which a justifiable acquittal at a trial nevertheless prejudices the accused's future life. Given modern day concerns over sensational press coverage this is an issue as valid today (probably more so) than it was in war-time Britain. But the film does not follow this line, rather it presents us with a good old-fashioned courtroom drama, culminating in a finale of which Perry Mason would have been proud. Quite how the hero lawyer manages this stretches the judicial imagination somewhat, especially with a flawed witness, whose evidence clinches the outcome, not having to testify from the witness box.

Despite these reservations this is an enjoyable enough production which canters along at a good pace without any pretensions to high art. And it was nice to see some early work from two actresses, Irene Handl (particularly malevolent as the first "victim") and Kathleen Harrison, who both went on to greater things in post-war British TV.

Very good script by Gilliat based on a novel. Likable protagonists and support characters, as well as nearly-likable villains in a wonderful cast who work pleasingly together.

I'm glad Barnes, not Redgrave (apparently as originally planned), fell into the role of "Stephen." Barnes is gentlemanly distant and professional, but obviously protective of Lockwood as friend and client. Redgrave might have handled the role in a cheesier, more intimate manner, not appropriate in this quiet script. Livesey provides a friendly but professional touch as Barnes' policeman flat-mate.

Refreshing to see characters interact without sturm und drang for a change, in well-paced unfolding of Barnes' defense of Lockwood.

Enjoyed this movie very much. There aren't many that succeed in first gear - maybe "A Canterbury Tale" is another such, but there aren't many others.

Nurse Margaret Lockwood is acquitted of killing her patient by poison -- we see the woman commit suicide, so that's fine. However, when her next patient dies under almost identical circumstances, can she escape the hangman's noose? Twentieth Century-Fox spared no expense for their British production of this movie. They hired director Carol Reed and a fabulous cast, including Margaret Lockwood, Barry Barnes, Emlyn Williams, Roger Livesy, Basil Radford.... well, the list of performers whose name you'd recognize goes on and on. Sidney Giliat wrote the screenplay. Unfortunately, there are some problems with that script. There is never any doubt as to Miss Lockwood's innocence, and the attempt to do a Hitchcock-style thriller is weakened, both by the lack of Hitchcock's black humor and much of a sense of trying to hide from the police. Most of the actual action takes place while Miss Lockwood is in prison and on trial.

Without comparing it to other works, how does it stand on its own, as a mystery and courtroom drama? Pretty good. There seems a very real chance until the very end that Miss Lockwood will be found guilty, and the way she is acquitted is very clever. All the performers do a fine job and Carol Reed's direction is impeccable. I might have been happier if her guilt had been left in doubt; from my viewpoint, not showing the first patient kill herself might have better served the movie's suspense. However, there is still plenty of excellence to go around.