An over the top, extremely theatrical performance by William Dewhurst opens the film with a band, giving a hysterical bit of unsolicited advice to naive country girl Rène Ray, coming to London for the first time. No sooner has she arrived and got in the place to stay then she's implicated in the murder of Robert Newton who before he dies asks her to deliver a message to his brother, John Mills, at the Green Cockatoo club. Unfortunately there's no bird like there was in Warner Brothers chilling mystery "The White Cockatoo", just a few years before, but there is a great atmosphere showing London at its seediest. The criminal element is very apparent, and for a naive girl like Ray, being wanted for murder is the last thing she expected.
This is a great opportunity to see Mills and Newton before they became big stars of the British cinema, established in the theater already but relatively unknown although they had been in films for a while. Newton has enough footage at the beginning of the film to get the plot rolling, and is the most youthful I've ever seen him. Mills managed to have a lengthy career as a juvenile, looking exactly the same 9 years later in David Lean's film version of "Great Expectations". Ray is appropriately sweet and nervous, making for a perfect fragile heroin. Dewhurst hams it up as if he was playing King Lear opposite one of his daughters, sort of a Greek chorus you wish would reappear later. Definitely an above average quota quickie, a pedigree among a bunch of barking mutts, the perfect metaphor considering the dog racing scene early in the film.
This is a great opportunity to see Mills and Newton before they became big stars of the British cinema, established in the theater already but relatively unknown although they had been in films for a while. Newton has enough footage at the beginning of the film to get the plot rolling, and is the most youthful I've ever seen him. Mills managed to have a lengthy career as a juvenile, looking exactly the same 9 years later in David Lean's film version of "Great Expectations". Ray is appropriately sweet and nervous, making for a perfect fragile heroin. Dewhurst hams it up as if he was playing King Lear opposite one of his daughters, sort of a Greek chorus you wish would reappear later. Definitely an above average quota quickie, a pedigree among a bunch of barking mutts, the perfect metaphor considering the dog racing scene early in the film.