The Long Dark Hall

A Broody, Moody Movie that is a slightly better than Average British Thriller that makes up for its slim Story and vapid Ending with Atmospheric touches and strong Characters. It has a striking Noirish beginning with very dark streets inhabited by a Serial Killer that resembles a sewer rat.

One of the Victims has a cheating Husband as a Lover and He is falsely accused of Her Murder. The middle becomes a Courtroom Melodrama with cross examinations and suspect Witnesses. This all leads to a confrontation between the real Killer and the Accused Man's Wife that is edge of your seat Suspenseful.

This Movie has a Sleazy Look and a Downbeat Tone that aside from the aforementioned Wrap Up, places it in the Realm of Foreign Film-Noir and has a Creep Factor that is exploited by the truly unsettling Murderer and dingy surroundings. Slightly underrated.

A very fine actress was Lilli Palmer - sensitive, thoughtful, moving - and this picture gives us another reason to admire her skill. And anyone wishing to learn how to create a believable performance would do well to study her work and profit by bit. In THE LONG DARK HALL she brings great strength to her role as a wife who wants to believe in her husband, come what may.

THE LONG DARK HALL was produced by Rex Harrison himself. For the film he brought together a fine group of artists to help him make it, among them screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, whose long and distinguished record in the film world needs no introduction. He chose a top British cinematographer, Wilkie Cooper, to bring the proper film noir look and mood to the film and commissioned Benjamin Frankel to compose another of his fine scores. The cast is extremely good. One always marvels at the effortless perfection of the likes of Denis O'Dea, Brenda de Banzie and Raymond Huntley who have never, to my knowledge, ever given a bad performance. The villainy in the film was in the very capable hands of Anthony Dawson, whom many will remember as the paid murderer in Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER.

While the ending is cobbled together a shade too quickly the great fun I had watching this drama made up for any disappointment. After all, the ending was a logical one, even if it could have been handled with a bit more cinematic flair. All in all, a nice, atmospheric, well-made thriller.

When Arthur Groome (Rex Harrison) finds his girlfriend murdered at her Earls Court flat and becomes stricken with grief and fear, he promptly runs from the scene of the crime. Questioned by the police about the crime, Arthur, a married man, in panic denies all knowledge of the girl. Soon, however, he finds himself charged with murder and inexorably drawn towards the gallows...

Directed by Anthony Bushell and Reginald Beck, it is adapted to screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and William Fairchild from Edgar Lustgarten's novel. Harrison's real life wife at the time, Lilli Palmer, plays his loyal spouse here, while Benjamin Frankel scores the music and Wilkie Cooper is the cinematographer.

Largely ignored and underseen these days, due in the main that some critics of the time noted it has uncomfortable parallels to the real life Harrison and Carole Landis suicide affair - plus Harrison himself quickly denounced the film as dreadful - it's actually a decent wrong man court case picture often filmed in gorgeous film noir styles.

There is no mystery element here, for we know Arthur is innocent, and in fact we know who the killer is. We are given two murders in the first twenty minutes, each a year apart, the first is photographed on the outside in shadows, gaslights and upon a moist cobbled alleyway. The second, where the object of Arthur's lovelorn attention (Patricia Cutts) resides, is stifling in its cruel intensity.

It's a sly story of obsession, circumstantial devilments, manipulation and somewhat oddly, loyalty. The suspense is ramped up as Arthur gets ever deeper in the mire during the court case (look how Cooper photographs the critical sequences in court), while his loving wife is being befriended by the real murderer (a wonderfully rat faced Anthony Dawson) who has his own distorted motives that he wants to bare out.

Viewing it now the police work due to the writing comes off as being very shoddy, and the finale is just a bit too much leftfield to wholly satisfy. Yet this is a very tidy Brit-Noir styled suspenser that comes recommended to fans of leading man and noirish visuals. 7/10

This is a pretty interesting mystery. It's not really suspenseful but it's done with style.

However, I wonder what purpose it was meant to serve for the public relations of its star Rex Harrison. His friend Carole Landis, a charming star of generally minor films, had killed herself a few years before this came out. As a result, his therefore rising box office appeal had plummeted. Indeed, the brilliant "Unfaithfully Yours" had the bad fortune to come out right after Ms. Landis had died. No one wanted to see Rex Harrison killing a woman over and over -- even if it was in his imagination. "Unfaithfully Yours" was not a success, despite director Preston Sturges's career as Hollywood (apparent) golden boy. Sturges really did not survive this failure commercially.

So, here we have a decent man accused of murdering a pretty young woman. Like the star himself, the character is married to (the very appealing) Lilli Palmer. I don't want to give away the plot. Let's just say that this is a movie that comes out against quick decisions in tabloid cases.

Can this have been a coincidence? Maybe it was. I don't know anything about its history. However, I sincerely doubt that it was.

Wow--talk about divergent reviews. Two apparently hated the film (giving it a score of 2) and two liked it very much (giving it a score of 7). I think my opinion is somewhat in the middle--though I think giving the film a 2 is awfully silly. It's NOT a bad film, though I would agree with goldbug-2 that the forensic work done by the police seems sloppy. In fact, up until late in the film, I could look past the problems with the knife and other evidence. However, the completely unbelievable ending and the major mistake in the film concerning the witness they could not locate made me mad--as it just looked sloppy and the film seemed to be wrapped up too quickly. Let me explain the problem with both. Rex Harrison's character insisted there was a witness that could place him at the restaurant and later you see this witness come to court but then walk away without giving evidence. How could this be? The film was told to an author by a newspaper man but how could the newspaper man tell that the witness DID come to court but then ran away without telling anyone--how could he have known this?! As for the ending, the film maintained a rather steady pace throughout but at the end, everything was basically described to the audience--neatly wrapping everything up but not even showing what they were describing! It was like they decided not to film the last 20 minutes of the movie and just sum it up in 5!! Sloppy indeed.

It's all rather sad, as up until then, the film was well written, acted and kept my attention. Sadly, I was anticipating giving the film a 7--but the sloppy ending really brought the film down to the level of mediocrity. Too bad.

By the way, I rarely directly complain about an other review, but the one reviewer that complained ad nauseum about the 1950s really needs to stick to the film itself and not give us a diatribe about sexism and repression. You can't so strongly attack one film because you have such strong contempt for the 1950s! Who cares what you think about the 1950s? While I do agree that Lilli Palmer played a woman with very low self-esteem (considering how much she excused her womanizing husband), such vehemence about the film is just bizarre. Her character might have justified giving the film a somewhat lower score, but not this low.