The Interrupted Journey

Just take a few deep breaths when the film-makers over-stress the plot points, and you'll find this a fun movie with a tasty wee twist on it's tail. The acting is over the top at times, with Mr. Todd doing some ridiculous grimacing, but it was made in '49' when I think these particular film-makers must have thought that their audience was pretty stupid, so they threw subtlety out the window. A good performance by the great Tom Walls. Before watching ask yourself if you are in the mood for this type of film, if so you'll have a good time-I did.

This is a good film for anybody who likes Hitchcock, Film Noir, Detective or Romance movies. It manages to hit all these bases nicely. There is excellent cinematography, a reasonably involving script and some very surprising, yet natural, twists in the plot. While the tension does not match Hitchcock at his best, it does stand up well against a lot of lesser Hitchcock efforts. For example, it is better than "the Wrong Man," "the Paradine Case," or "Under Capricorn." and as good as "Secret Agent." The actors were all fine, with Christine Norden giving her usual better than they deserve performance. She was perhaps the sexiest women working in British cinema at the time.

Here's the basic plot setup. A married man and married woman leave their spouses and run away on a train together. Racked with quilt, the man decides to return to his home. It appears that the emergency chord on the train gets pulled and a train wreck ensues killing 10 people. The man soon becomes the chief suspect as the person who caused the accident, yet there is much more going on here than first appears.

Some people might find the style of the ending a bit of a disappointment, but I think it was actually pretty fresh in 1949, and not at all the cliché it later became when overused in later movies and television shows. It is more logical and more satisfying than most endings of this style.

This movie is a pretty good surprise : the story with multiple twists and constant psychological details is really gripping, cinematography is impressive in the important sequences, and casting serves intelligently the story especially Valerie Hobson (so distinguished) and Richard Todd who form a handsome couple. Better than Hitchcock?

This is an amazing nightmare thriller taking you on a journey of constantly new surprising turns, and the fact that the journey is interrupted only leads a train of journeys leading you ever more astray and ending up in a nightmare abyss.

Valerie Hobson graces the film with her charming and amiable personality, whoever would have left a wife like that? - which the hero (Richard Todd) immediately realizes but to his dismay finds it is already too late.

The intrigue is fantastic. It's kind of Kafkaesque in its labyrinth of constantly worse complications, and not until the mother closes the door on Richard with her testimony of having identified her dead son herself you begin to suspect that everything is not quite all right - something begins to warn you about all logic and reality disappearing.

It's marvellously filmed with its turning more and more almost hallucinogenic, as the drunkard at the hotel really starts derailing for serious.

It's a wondrous concoction of a train of events leading you off the rails so often and so frequently that you begin seriously to doubt the honesty of the film, but you can stay calm - it all makes perfect sense in the end, as the detail of the clock finally concludes this strange odyssey of a psychological nightmare.

Richard Todd (wearing a vat of Brylcreem on his hair) agonises over whether he should run away with his peroxided mistress (Christine Nordern) or return to to his stolid missus (Valerie Hobson). He jumps out of a train, and thinks he's caused multiple deaths. Lots of angst ensues, especially when it looks like the loyal missus won't believe in his innocence. As a melodrama it's not too bad, despite the cheat in the plot, and Todd's hammy performance. For once, horsey Ms Hobson's frigidity is welcome. As the loyal old stick, she refrains from chewing the scenery. Her hair, however looks as ugly as her clothes. Ms Nordern also acquits herself well. She's hefty, predatory and suitably tarty (she also sports an appalling hairdo)..but she seems genuine...there's a scene in which she kisses Todd with what looks like genuine sexual hunger - something you don't often see in twee British thrillers like this. The best thing in the film is probably the arty camera-work.. there are some really interesting angles. There's a sequence in an old hotel where the camera and direction becomes almost Bergmanesque. Todd and Vida Hope (the hotelier) all moodily lit, suddenly launch into some very slow dialogue as though there's some deep meaning to their standard mystery story exchange. Early on Dora Bryan (always a joy) appears briefly as a waitress, who serves Todd and Nordern with some rock cakes - which are integral to the plot. Non-British viewers may be baffled by these delicacies; but I urge them to inquire no further.