Mine Own Executioner

This is a highly delicate psychological drama of a case of schizophrenia which proves too difficult to handle correctly. It is typical of such cases that they are completely unpredictable and can appear as jovial and harmonious as any perfectly healthy person when suddenly something else takes over which is too terrible for words. The director himself had a war background from both world wars and knew what he was directing as he visualized war traumas on film. The war scenes here are just a short parenthesis in the middle of the film and are passed by never to return, but they provide the essential key to the film and its horrible account of a traumatized war victim who never can get rid of his past. The dialogue is splendid and extremely sustained all the way through, and the three ladies also play an important part. Above all, it is Burgess Meredith's film who makes a perfectly convincing realization of a psychiatrist's difficulties when he is faced with an extreme case. As a psychological war drama, it is of the very highest rank and the higher, for showing the war as little as possible.

This is a highly superior film in every way, based on a novel and screenplay by the novelist and screenwriter Nigel Balchin. (He wrote the screenplays for Sandy Mackendrick's magnificent film MANDY, 1952; for THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS, 1956, see my review; and for 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET, 1956, see my review.) It was certainly a high point in the directorial career of Anthony Kimmins, who is largely forgotten today but here shows a positive genius and a Hitchcockian touch with the film's most exciting scene. The story concerns a conscientious and talented British psychiatrist who lacks a medical degree, but whose success with patients exceeds that of most of his colleagues. The professional tensions to which this gives rise are excellently portrayed. The psychiatrist is sensitively played by Burgess Meredith, who is perfect for such a part. His own demons haunt him, and his difficult relationship with his wife forms the backdrop to the main story, constituting a fine counterpoint which does not appear artificial, as could easily have been the case in less skillful hands. One day a charming young woman with a shining smile and expectant eyes comes to see him and begs him to treat her husband, overcoming his hesitancy to take on such a case. She says he recently tried to strangle her to death. Barbara White plays this young wife. She has an excellent screen presence, and it is a pity that she only appeared in six feature films and three TV roles. She only really worked in the film business fox six years. Her husband in real life was the actor who plays her husband in this film, the Irish actor Kieron Moore (born Kieron O'Hanrahan). They married in 1947, the year this film came out, having met and worked together the previous year in the film THE VOICE WITHIN (1946), a forgotten and apparently lost film of which no reviews are recorded. Moore is truly sensational in this part, playing a former airman who was shot down in Burma, imprisoned by the Japanese, and has become a split personality case. His performance is mesmerically convincing. The flash back scene of him being shot down is very realistic and unnerving, with the antiaircraft shells exploding all around him. The most amazing scene in the film involves someone climbing up a multi-storey fire ladder, and even Hitchcock could not have squeezed more nervous tension out of it than we see here. The drama of this film is multi-layered, intense, and highly-textured. We really do not know what is going to happen, as the tale becomes increasingly complex and worrying. Burgess Meredith's devoted, slightly hopeless, and long-suffering wife is played with great dignity and sensitivity by Dulcie Gray. Christine Norden plays an alluring vamp, wife of a friend, with whom Burgess Meredith has developed a guilty obsession. This was only her second film, as she only entered the film business in this year, 1947 and left it in 1951. In 1949 she appeared with Kieron Moore again in SAINT AND SINNERS, a film set in an Irish village and only recently resurrected on DVD, which I have not seen yet. (Slowly but surely the old British films are re-emerging after decades in the vaults.) The treatment of the profession of psychiatry in this film is remarkably profound, and avoids falling into the sensational superficiality found in most attempts to portray it in the cinema. At the time this film was made, an extreme case of shell shock resulting in a psychopathic condition was a highly topical subject, as there were many such difficult cases then in all the countries which had just recently emerged from the War. One could even say that in its own way, this film semi-qualifies for being a film noir, as it is steeped in the gloom of guilt and doubt of that time. And as with all films made in London back then, the streets are almost empty of traffic. Alas, alack, if only! This story by Nigel Balchin was subsequently filmed for British television in 1959, and as a Dutch TV movie in 1960.

This is an insanely underrated film, faithfully screenplayed by Nigel Balchin from his engrossing and subtle novel of the same name. After I saw the film back in the 80's I trawled the pre-internet second hand bookshops to read as many of his other works as I could, including The Small Back Room, Fall Of The Sparrow, Sort Of Traitors, Sundry Creditors, and others more or less excellent too but none quite up to the standards here.

Non-medically trained psycho-analyst Felix Milne is involved with two practices (one paying and one for the poor) two women (one his wife one the woman he thinks he loves) and two important patients (one a potentially violent schizo and one himself). The schizo's story is prised out under hypnosis, while the shrink's story is prised out through events. And as usual where human emotions are rampant events spiral out of control to an unguessable outcome. Two points: there's more of a story going on underneath the main story, there are many sub-dramas going on; and I think along with Obsession the film most perfectly captures the post War zeitgeist of a London pulling itself together again. In addition to a good story and good acting there's some splendid photographic framing and atmospheric homely scenes to mull over, although the washed out copy I just saw didn't really do it full justice – UK Channel 4 used to screen a decent copy so hopefully that will resurface someday. It's a pity the main character had to become a Canadian – but it was probably more convincing than acidic Burgess Meredith playing an Englishman! Kieron Moore was a bit more wooden than he needed to be, however Dulcie Gray was so charming as Milne's long-suffering wife she was almost a extra diversion.

Some people might deplore the lack of grittiness, sordidness, sex and yobbishness so it's not for them - although there is one violent scene it would be handled far more graphically in colour hd cgi nowadays. It's a film that's obviously old-fashioned (as everything is sooner or later), wordy with people apparently with marbles in their mouths, thoughtful and thought-provoking on simultaneously simple and deep levels. I notice that at present there are no second opinions available on IMDb, that's because it's clearly an excellent and worthy film it'd be madness to dis.

I will simply concur with most everyone else who has praised this excellent film and add only that it certainly wasn't underrated when it came out: critics were unanimous in their praise and the film was even selected as the British entry in the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.

The only pity is that the only thing that seems to be available on DVD or video are horrible copies that do not do the film's visuals justice. It can only be hoped that this is corrected one day soon.

I must correct one of the writers who credits the film's fine cinematography to Freddie Francis. The cinematographer on the film was in fact Wilkie Cooper, who did so much brilliant work throughout his career. Mr Francis did work on the film, as Cooper's camera operator. But the lighting, composition and creating of visuals was the work of Cooper and that fine art director William Andrews.

See the film. You won't regret it.

I have an impressive collection of 1940s movies on DVD but this one has hitherto eluded me.Full marks then to www.youtube.com for up-loading this missing gem of a film and thereby giving me a viewing pleasure.Yes I know that in the immediate post war years the fall out of physical and mental stress from combat affected returning servicemen and that apart from their physical wounds there was a need to treat their minds through psychiatry.Consequently the film industry produced quite a few movies portraying the recovery treatment to war veterans and civilians.Examples were "Spellbound"1946 "The Seventh Veil"1947 & "Since You Went Away "1944.

Dulcie Gray is in her familiar role of a put upon wife (as she played in "They Were Sisters") but in this film she has more character & strength of mind when clumsily supporting her lay-psychiatrist husband (Burgess Meredith).I first saw the attractive Barbara White in "Quiet Weekend" (1946),the sequel to "Quiet Wedding"(1940) and here she has a grown up part playing Molly Sinclair Lucian.Kieron Moore plays her ill-fated mentally distressed war veteran husband, Adam Lucian, who is the main patient of Burgess Meredith.Nigel Balchin wrote the novel on which this screenplay was based.Another intelligent novel by him produced into a film was "The Small Back Room" produced the same year as "My Own Executioner",(1947).

Definitely worth another viewing as long as it remains uploaded on www.youtube.com.I rated it highly 9/10 as one of Burgess Meredith's best films, especially as I noticed it had a rating of only a bit above 6/10.