Front Page Story

This is a wonderful film of almost documentary character showing the life at a newspaper editorial office with Jack Hawkins in charge, happening to all kinds of incidents that have to be followed up and covered, an ordinary day's work for an editor, and it is not easy. There are several very different stories that develop at the same time with that in common that none of them turns out as expected. A young widow (Eva Bartok) is at the Old Bailey charged with murder of her husband, who was dying anyway - it appears to have been some kind of a killing by mercy. A young mother with five kids is lying at the hospital on the operation table with no certain outcome of the operation. A scientist in a high position of nuclear physics is eager to have his message spread by the newspaper to the world while he conveys atomic secrets to the enemy. And Jack Hawkins' wife is leaving him after having been left alone too much.

So there are four different dramas (at least) on the hands of the editorial, and they keep developing to major crises all four of them. The most interesting drama is that of the widow Eva Bartok. Jack Hawkins puts his most critical journalist Michael Goodliffe on the case, which leads to a dramatic climax after everything has gone wrong, questioning for serious the ethics and morals of journalism and showing upsetting interiors of inside stories. Finally there is the ultimate Front Page Story as an air crash consumes all public interest at the cost of what really matters concerning human values... It seldom happens that I want to see a film over again at once, but this was one of them.