Cloudburst

Interesting post-war British revenge tragedy which, surprisingly, casts Robert Preston as a Canadian anti-hero. Fine acting throughout with Harold Lang, who was to become a charismatic acting coach at RADA, as the bad guy. The Scottish actress, Elizabeth Sellars, is doe-eyed and lovely as the lead actress and Thomas Heathcote excels in a cameo performance. It's also good to see some post-war British film industry stalwarts such as Noel Howlett and George Woodbidge turning in their usual robust performances. The black and white photography is quite magical although the film score is overly dramatic. It's sad to see that this film is quite forgotten: the performances demand greater consideration. An English film noir.

A complicated story with many undercurrents to it, that are not plainly visible to the eye - a viewer might get confused by this intrigue, the main character being very difficult to understand. Only if you know something of the second world war and its experiences, the character that Robert Preston impersonates becomes credible.

It's a very different espionage story to the usual ones. Preston is a code breaker expert and has been through quite a lot in the war, and so has his wife - you never get really into her story, but it's clear she has gone through some very difficult ordeals. For that reason, and many others, he loves her more than can be expressed, and the first part of the film with their relationship is beautifully illustrated by excellent music reminiscent of a Rachmaninov symphony. The music by Frank Spencer is outstanding throughout. When the cloudburst occurs the upsetting shock is really unsettling, especially to Robert Preston, and the romantic film turns sinister and the more so for each new turn of events.

The main asset of the film is the very skillful story, which is more than intelligent, and you can't help admiring Robert Preston's character for his astuteness in managing his own intrigue. He surprises you all the time by constantly knowing more than the audience and thus leads the way into his own abyss, which is unavoidable - he admits it himself, and the audience accepts it, that he is already hopelessly a dead man for his atrocious loss.

It's as good a spy story as any of the great ones by Hitchcock and Carol Reed, only this is so much more sinister.

In England during the war, John Graham (Robert Preston) works to decode enemy communication. A couple hits and runs on his beloved pregnant wife. They callously run her over to death in order to escape. With the car's license plate, he tracks down the killers without telling the police.

I really wish that she could fall more naturally. Carol's fall is almost comical when the scene calls for something brutal and devastating. Backing up over her is utterly barbaric. It's a sequence that needs to be executed at a high visual level. It's her fall. She can't be doing the silly girlie fall.

After that, the film brings out John's single-minded determination. He's like a British shark locked on his target. The police investigation is a lot less compelling. It's uncovering things that the audience already knows. It is interesting to have the police get ahead of John but the revenge climax is problematic and conveniently staged. The movie is better off staying with John as he burns a path of destruction searching for that woman. That would have been amazingly brutal. It needs to follow the brutal example of running over that boxer guy. It's such a compelling scene. It's savagery at its finest. If only, the movie could maintain that level for the full length.

The next movie watched for the "House of Hammer" Podcast is "Cloudburst", a 1951 film, notable for being the first one Hammer made at Bray Studios following their acquisition of it.

In post war Briton, John Graham (Robert Preston) and his team continue to undertake cryptography work for both the Police and for British Intelligence. His seemingly settled life is devastated when his wife Carol (Elizabeth Sellars) is killed in a hit and run accident. Broken, and out for revenge, he uses contacts within the Police department to track down his wife's killers. Bringing them to justice though, isn't exactly what he has in mind.

Adapted from a play by Leo Marks, who would later provide a screenplay for Michael Powell's seminal "Peeping Tom" "Cloudburst" marks, to my eyes anyway, a big step up in the quality of filmmaking we've seen from Hammer studios. It maybe was that I was watching a print that had been worked on, that might help explain how good the film stock looked or the step up in sound quality - but that wouldn't explain the sudden move to exterior shots, multiple locations, camera's attached to cars for visual effects.

Nor would it account for bringing over Robert Preston to feature as the films lead. This was before he would gather acclaim in "The Music Man" or his Oscar nomination for "Victor/Victoria". Preston is really good here, a proper presence as the devastated leading man. Whilst I appreciate the noir, and indeed general darkness of the picture as a whole, I do wish that it held together a little better. In retrospect, I wish that Graham's skills had tied more into how he tracked down the pair, or even how he covers up what happens to them.

It's not that I disliked it because of this, it's more that I wished that the plot had matched the characterisation, because there's a real depth of backstory to the leads.

A 1951 British film noir starring Robert Preston. Preston is a Canadian living in Merry ol' England, married w/a young one on the way. He served w/the Brits during the war as a cryptologist (code breaker) & still toils in that craft as a career. Tragedy strikes when one night while out on a walk w/his wife, played by Elizabeth Sellars, near their home a speeding car strikes & kills her but not before in desperation Preston grabs hold of the driver begging him & his companion for help before they flee away. Preston then sets out on a road for revenge by corralling some of his old running mates from the service to provide him w/info & tools to find the errant killers (we learn they were racing from the scene of another murder before hitting Sellars) but after Preston dispatches the driver (he runs him over w/his car) a perverse game is enacted as he leaves a note w/an encrypted code which the investigating officer brings to his office to decode. As the narrative runs down, Preston sets his sights on the driver's companion who has been taken into protective custody w/the detective putting together all the pieces to figure out who the culprit is. Preston is fantastic here as man of action working through his anguish where his goal will not bring him the satisfaction he thinks he'll get.