Procuramos o Assassino

It's all very nicely done. I had barely, if ever, heard of any of the leads in this movie before I saw it. I was expecting a sloppy film noir set in London, but it was a pleasant surprise when the dialogue and the players were as good as they are. The story is tight, mostly, and there is real tension and unexpected humor. Overall, it was very effective.

I was particularly impressed with Eric Portman as Colebrooke. There was not much of a tradition playing sociopaths at this point in the movies. Of the few that had been portrayed, Cagney in "White Heat", for example, is much more histrionic and obvious than Portman is here.

I might quibble with some plot points and some really heavy-handed staging, but really this is much like middle Hitchcock without all of the psychological mumbo-jumbo to push it along.

I always thought that Eric Portman was never much more than an efficient actor; rarely does he ever deviate from his usual, rather linear, style of performance. This one, though, is a bit different and he is rather good as the son of a hangman who, losing his grasp on reality, is obsessed with strangling young women. With the police (Roland Culver & a rather entertaining Stanley Holloway) hot on the trail, he falls for Dulcie Gary ("Anne") and for the first time, he has doubts about what to do next... Lawrence Huntingdon has done a decent job with a solid cast based on quite an intriguing Percy Robinson play - and the last twenty minute build to quite an exciting crescendo that takes more than a casual swipe at red tape and the "more than my job's worth" brigade... Certainly worth a go - you might spot Wilfred Hyde-White at Madame Tussaud's!

Don't be put off by the generic title. This is a film of subtlety and grace.

Eric Portman is perfect as the troubled protagonist. Dulcie Gray enchants as the vulnerable yet strong-willed heroine. And the supporting cast is uniformly excellent.

This is a variation on the Jack the Ripper theme. Someone is strangling young women, sending notes to Scotland Yard in advance. Ronald Culver is absolutely right as the chief inspector on the case.

The psychology may be painted with slightly broad strokes. But the acting elevate that: The pain felt by all concerned is palpable. We do not admire the killer but we have understanding of the person's behavior. The victims and would-be victims are touching. And the attempts by secondary characters to help are persuasive and upsetting to us.

This is like a Dostyevsky thriller, you know the murderer from the start, and you have the privilege of together with the script writer gradually intersecting him piece by piece, to get into the very heart of the matter of his complex psychology. Like Raskolnikov, he almost begs to get found out and be delivered, Eric Portman makes a fantastic performance by never sparing the poor murderer his tribulations, who can't help being what he is, he can't explain it and understand it either, and he even prays to God to be set free. The explanations of the malaise "being in the blood" is poor and does not hold. And then there are all the other persons getting involved, his poor mother above all, who never suspects her son to be as affected as his father until it is too late, and his girls, all innocents and suspecting nothing, and then the marvellous police officers, the meticulously methodical Roland Culver deliberately beating about the bush until he at last has evidence, and Stanley Holloway as his second, dutiful to the last. There are others also and precious details, the case about the cigar, the spectacular scenes at the fair and Hyde Park, and the towering thriller of the final settlement, almost reminding of "The Third Man" although being out in the open and in broad daylight. You feel the keen pen of Emeric Pressburger here in almost every detail, the famous partner of Michael Powell, who was the script writer of them and one of the best in film history. To all this comes the haunting melody of Mischa Spoliansky, a Russian composer who had to escape from Russia to Germany to later make his career in England with various film scores, but this could be his very best: actually reminding of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's "Capriccio Diabolico" from 1935, expertly performed by Andrès Segovia among others. In brief, this very noir British thriller contains everything you could wish for, while the almost Dostoyeskian psychology is its major treat.

Eric Portman (Viktor) is the grandson of a notorious hangman. His grandfather's sadistic, psychotic reputation as a killer plays heavily on Portman's psyche. Actually, it does more than that - it influences his behaviour. However, he is unable to change who he is. A serial killer is at large murdering women and goading the police. Can Roland Culver (Inspector Conway) and his team prevent the killer from striking again and again....?

This film contains some dodgy accents, in particular, a very posh bus driver as played by Derek Farr (Jack) and a young Scottish woman, Jenny Laird (Jeannie), who comes from absolutely nowhere in Scotland. There are humorous moments eg, Stanley Holloway's portrayal of "Sgt Sullivan" and Gerard Kempinski as a waiter, alongside tense dramatic sections, eg, the murder of Jenny Laird (Jeannie) in the park. I found Barbara Everest as "Mrs Colebrooke" slightly weird b t it's a minor point in an otherwise convincing tale of a killer who is born to kill. We are left in no doubt as to who the killer is from the beginning and this adds to the tension throughout the film. I thought that the killer's fate was rather convenient - an easy way to end the film - but it's still a good film.