The Night My Number Came Up

Commander Michael Hordern has a detailed dream of 8 people in a plane crash which he relays to a group of travellers....due to fly the next day.

Interesting notion around whether destiny is preordained. A fine British cast deliver quite a theatrical piece with Redgrave, Knox and Elliott on fine form throughout this will they won't they fulfill the dream

Leslie Halliwell in his book HALLIWELL'S HARVEST refers to this as a "smoking room story", which is the kind of reminiscence tale told between old friends in a club over drinks. It is not given in one shot - all good anecdotes are told slowly and build up. This one (apparently based on a true incident from the Far East in the late 1940s) takes it's time, but as it progresses the momentum of events squeeze and squeeze the human personnel involved until the moment of crisis.

Do you believe in fate? It is an issue that has perplexed man since we first began to reason. Are our destinies written out in the stars of astrology, or in the hands of the three Greek "Fates" who spin, measure, and cut our threads? Or is everything done by chance, pure and simple? Years ago I read a portion of an essay by William James (I think it was him) for a philosophy course. James dismissed fate - he felt that the problem with believing in it is that if you decide to go down street A to reach point D a fatalist will say that you were always supposed to do that. But if you go down Street B to reach point D the fatalist would say the same thing, and that didn't sit well with James. But a fatalist would probably point out that as you went on that occasion only by one of those routes, that is the destined route you had to take at that occasion. So who can really know? In THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP, Michael Redgrave is a British Air Marshall who must go on a mission with several others, including Denholm Elliot and Alexander Knox in one of the military Dakotas used in World War II. There would be nothing wrong about this, but Michael Hordern who is in charge of arranging the trip has just had a nightmare wherein Redgrave, Elliot, Knox, and several others are traveling to the location of this mission (which Hordern did not know about when he went to bed that night) in a Dakota that is in mechanical difficulties and in very bad weather. In fact, it is crashing on a beach.

Hordern makes the mistake of telling this to the three of them, and while Redgrave pooh-poohs it, Elliot and Knox are not as certain (although Knox pretends it is all nonsense). Among other things, a major political figure (Ralph Truman) is supposed to be on the plane too in the dream, and he is not scheduled to attend the mission that Redgrave is going on. So the preparations go ahead. But point by point, little things from the dream begin to fall into place in the real world. For example, at a stopover, Truman suddenly shows up - he has to go by the Dakota on a separate trip, hooking up to another flight later on. Also there are a certain number of passengers, including a noisy one, who are to be on the plane. Everyone is happy when the number of passengers goes down, but it goes up as well. Then a rather noisy, boisterous businessman (George Rose, naturally), comes on board - literally manipulating his way on board when initially kept off by Elliot and Knox (he circumvents them going to Redgrave and Truman).

So the circumstances grow in the small world of that pressurized cabin as the passengers watch amazed at how good weather collapses and engine problems multiply (they can't raise the plane above a certain level outside the storm due to a pressurization problem - ironically enough). But Redgrave maintains his icy calm throughout the situation - he is determined that he and the others are not going to give into panic over the paranormal.

The film is excellent in tackling this type of situation in a serious way. In the end it does not matter if you are a fatalist or not, the film will carry you to to it's conclusion successfully.

One final minor point. I don't know much about the scrap metal business, but this film (made in 1955) and the Judy Holliday movie BORN YESTERDAY (1950) and one classic sequence in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) with Dana Andrews and the scrapped fleet of bombers are the only ones that seem to tackle this growing big business. A lot of military hardware was there for the taking after 1945. In BORN YESTERDAY, Harry (Broderick Crawford) owns junk yards and has built a local empire on scrap metal (and is in Washington to try to get the laws altered to expand his business). Here, George Rose (an English counterpart to Harry) is trying to get on the flight in order to get to Japan for an important conference dealing with British scrap metal interests in the Far East (and he constantly mentions the American competition as intense - a nod to Crawford?). It's almost enough to start a college study into the post war scrap metal business!

This is a film which will stay with you for a long time. Its title sets the tone for what follows : a flight which, as it continues, looks more and more to be one that will end in disaster and thus, apparently, mean that a man's dream regarding it will come frighteningly true. The increasing sense of foreboding is alleviated at one time or another by a development that appears to be at odds with the dream, that is, until something else transpires which then sees the exact circumstances of the dream restored. It is a film which, not unnaturally, gives rise to tension-laden conversations about whether there is such a thing as fate, but that is not the main impact of this film, which is that one's attention is riveted from the opening scene to the final shocking end.

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The seediness of the post-war colonial Far East and that rather morbid fascination with death and fate that pervades the consciousness of people who have been through a world-shattering conflict flavours this film. A great script (by RC Sherriff of 'Journeys End' fame) and a great cast - headed by that master of actorly understatement, Micheal Redgrave - slowly build the story, bit by bit. The exotic setting, where strange things could happen. The drab ordinariness of military outposts - which hightens the surreality of the events. A sense of a military and aristocratic world giving way with poor grace to the brash 'modern' future - epitomised by the crass Brummagem scrap dealer (accompanied by his effete elderly public-school personal assistant). The sense of dread is created by the pure spoken word and performance - of a good tale well-told. MR James in the age of Dakotas.

Although it may not have the same notoriety as some others produced by Ealing Studios under the benevolent leadership of Sir Michael Balcon this one is certainly one of the most intriguing. That it is based on a dramatic incident in the life of Air Marshall Sir Vincent Goddard who happened to be a spiritualist with an interest in paranormal activity, makes it even more intriguing.

Eight passengers and five crew members take off on a routine flight from Hong Kong to Japan. Unfortunately, the night before, three of the passengers have a dream recounted to them by a fellow dinner guest in which their plane crash lands. As the flight progresses the coincidences start piling up and what seemed a dream fast becomes a terrifying reality........

This film really works because of its excellent, tightly knit construction, literate script by R. C. Sheriff, ominous score by Malcolm Arnold and restrained direction by Leslie Norman.

Superlative Michael Redgrave plays the Air Marshall and heads a first rate cast whose understated performances give the film its dramatic intensity. This is probably the finest hour of actor Nigel Stock as the pilot who inadvertently hears about the dream and wishes he hadn't!

The ancients set great store by the prophetic power of dreams. Those who staunchly advocate 'free will' as opposed to 'predestination' will no doubt find the plot to be a load of tosh but 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy'!