Lonely Road

Nora Swinburne turns down Clive Brook's proposal, so he he gets drunk, goes driving, and runs his car into a ditch by the coast. He gets out, where a man talks about carpet sweepers, and then another man knocks out Brook. He wakes in a hospital, where he's told he was in a bad crash. When he gets out, he decides to drive to Scotland. Stopping in Leeds, he goes to a dance hall, where taxi-dancer Victoria Hopper and he spend the evening. She was on the stage, but the work was too irregular; this work is steadier. Her brother has his own truck, and is near paying her back the money she lent him. Most of the work happens at night, when he moves carpet sweepers and such.

When Brook returns to London, Norman Ramage comes to see him. Someone has been smuggling in machine guns; Miss Hopper's brother is involved. If he can get information out of her, well and good; otherwise, she'll be brought in. Brooks reluctantly agrees to help.

It's one of those movies in which the coincidences leave you slightly agog, but the performances are good. Miss Hopper is a cute young thing, and Brook's personal issues come out gradually and naturally. It's all too smoothly and swiftly operating a story to be utterly convincing, but director James Flood handles the story efficiently enough that the audience is carried away to the inevitable happy ending.