Parky at the Pictures (DVD 18/12/2014)

THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE (1953).

Also known as Heat Wave, this noir adapted by Ken Hughes from his own novel (High Wray) was co-produced by American Robert L. Lippert and the Hammer studio that was about to become synonymous with horror. The plot owes much to Émile Zola's La Bête humaine (1890) and its most famous hard-boiled knock-off, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). But Hughes has also clearly seen Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), as this tale of murderous infidelity flashes back from an opening confession, delivered by struggling American novelist, Alex Nicol. He had travelled to Lake Windermere in the hope that the spirit of Wordsworth and Coleridge would cure him of writer's block. Instead, he is lured into a web of intrigue by femme fatale Hillary Brooke, who seeks to install him as her latest plaything in succession to artist Paul Carpenter. However, Nicol becomes firm friends with Brooke's millionaire husband, Sidney James, and is warned to stay away from the feckless Brooke by her despising stepdaughter, Susan Stephen. It's obvious from the outset what is going to happen, but the performances are solid and Hughes (who would, of course, go on to direct Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968) makes evocative use of both Walter J. Harvey's lakeland vistas and J. Elder Willis's interiors, which would have seemed very chic to British audiences still feeling the effects of the war.

FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE (1954).

Having run in the West End for over 500 performances, Arthur Watkyn's comedy of marital manners reached the screen courtesy of director J. Lee Thompson. Stage stars Leslie Phillips and Geraldine McEwan were replaced by Dirk Bogarde and Susan Stephen, but this still breezes along and makes for a fascinating comparison as an insight into the changing nature of being a British newlywed with Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder's Millions Like Us (1943) and John Boulting's The Family Way (1966). However, one of the conditions Cecil Parker imposes on Bogarde in agreeing to let him marry his daughter is that he finds a job and a flat, as he has no intention of letting them sponge off him and wife Eileen Herlie. The resulting humour is very gentle, as landlord Dennis Price rips them off, neighbour Thora Hird pokes her nose in and foreman Sidney James takes no nonsense. But the sitcomedic episodes consistently amuse and it is always a pleasure to see such stalwarts as Athene Seyler, James Hayter, Peter Jones and Robin Bailey in supporting roles that reveal a good deal about ordinary people and the timbre of life as the period of postwar austerity was finally coming to an end. There isn't much chemistry between Stephen and Bogarde (who is a decade too old for the role), but the charm he had just started exhibiting as Simon Sparrow in Richard Gordon's Doctor series is in plentiful evidence and, thus, it's easy to see why he was the UK equivalent of such edgy US pin-ups as Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.

DUEL IN THE JUNGLE (1954).

A shadow hangs over this Anglo-American co-production, as assistant director Tony Kelly perished while testing the rapids on the Zambezi River that Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain were due to negotiate a few hours later. His two companions in the 14ft motor dinghy survived and it was presumed that Kelly was snatched by crocodiles as he tried to save film equipment. With cruel irony, the false report of a drowning sparks the action, as American insurance investigator Dana Andrews learns that diamond tycoon David Farrar has drowned while diving for gems off the coast of southern Africa. Smelling a rat, Andrews follows the dead man's fiancée, who has collected a $1 million insurance policy and is heading back to the village that Farrar has terrorised into becoming his private fiefdom. The erstwhile State Fair co-stars bring a bit of polish to proceedings, but simply cannot compete with Farrar, an scene-stealer in a dual role who booms and swaggers his way through the perfunctory plot. Clearly veteran director George Marshall were hoping to emulate the success of John Huston's The African Queen (1951) by trekking down to the Kruger Park Game Reserve before spending several weeks shooting interiors in deepest, darkest Elstree. Mary Merrall sparkles briefly as Farrar's dotty mother (and aunt), while Wilfrid Hyde-White is typically amusing as Andrews's shipboard companion. But the only reason to catch this Kordaesque hokum is Erwin Hillier's majestic location footage, which must have looked amazing to UK audiences in widescreen Technicolor at a time when most indigenous pictures were still in boxy black and white.

THE MAN WHO LOVED REDHEADS (1955).

The best Terence Rattigan adaptations were directed by Anthony Asquith. But Harold French had collaborated with the playwright before on The Day Will Dawn (1942) and English Without Tears (1944) and he makes a decent job of this reworking of the 1950 stage show, Who Is Sylvia? Key to its success is the ravishing Eastmancolor photography of Georges Périnal, which shows off the cascading tresses of Moira Shearer to dazzling effect, as she dances her way through four characterisations that immediately prompt comparison with Deborah Kerr's similarly disarming display in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). This is perhaps only fitting, as Shearer had made the transition from ballerina to actress in the Archers duo of The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). But she seems much more at home in this lively tale, which is told off screen by Kenneth More. At its heart, ageing diplomat John Justin reminisces about a lifetime trying to find the 16 year-old girl he had vowed (when two years her junior) to adore to eternity. By this time, he has long been married to blonde Gladys Cooper, who has proved as indulgent over 33 years as butler Roland Culver, who has been a loyal ally since meeting Justin on the Western Front in 1917. Son Denholm Elliott is less impressed, but nothing can prevent Justin's fondest memories from involving the Daphne the chirpy Cockney, Olga the Russian prima (whose performance of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty is simply sublime) and Colette, the aspiring actress who helps Cooper let the old fool down gently. Times have changed and such tomfoolery seems a little seedy. But French handles things with impeccable taste and the fine cast relish Rattigan's polished prose.

PORTRAIT OF ALISON (1955).

Reducing a three-hour BBC serial to a taut 84-minute thriller, director Guy Green and co-scenarist Ken Hughes ably capture the essence of this typically twisting Francis Durbridge mystery. Patrick Barr would probably have made a more animated lead than Hollywood import Robert Beatty, but he copes well enough as the portrait painter who learns from brother William Sylvester that their journalist sibling has plunged off a cliff near Milan with an actress companion. Convinced the deceased was on the trail of a diamond-smuggling gang, Scotland Yard inspector Geoffrey Keen visits Beatty to see if he has received a postcard of an oddly labelled bottle of Chianti. However, he becomes a suspect himself when the dead girl's father, Henry Oscar, asks him to paint a portrait using a photograph and an old dress. But model Josephine Griffin (who is about to marry the eccentric Allan Cuthbertson) is strangled while wearing the garment and the picture is vandalised. And so, Beatty decides to conduct his own investigation when secondhand car dealer William Lucas offers to sell him the postcard and Terry Moore turns up at his flat to reveal she didn't perish in Italy after all. Although crisply photographed by Wilkie Cooper, this is a bit plot heavy and suffers from chronic characterisation deficiency. But Green keeps the increasingly improbable action rattling along, while the likes of Terence Alexander, Frank Thornton and Sam Kydd provide effortless support.

LOSER TAKES ALL (1956).

Alexander Korda's reward for producing Carol Reed's acclaimed screen adaptations of Graham Greene's The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949) was to be lampooned as the idiosyncratic corporate bigwig in this fitfully amusing take on a 1955 novel that Greene adapted for director Ken Annakin. The undoubted highlight are Georges Périnal's widescreen Eastmancolor views of the Riviera, with the Vespa ride along winding roads to the hillside village being particularly memorable. But the storyline takes some swallowing, as managing director Robert Morley is so delighted that assistant accountant Rossano Brazzi has spotted a book-keeping error that he insists he cancels his forthcoming wedding to Glynis Johns in Bournemouth and stays in Monte Carlo at his expense instead. Bewildered, but grateful, the happy couple set off on their unexpected honeymoon. But Morley is so late in arriving to pay the bill that they have to borrow 250,000 francs of hotel manager Albert Lieven and Johns is dismayed when Brazzi uses it to test his gambling system at the casino. Indeed, even though he wins five million francs, Johns would rather lead a simple life with lounge lizard Tony Britton than listen to her husband scheme with Morley's boardroom rival, Felix Aylmer. By the time Morley arrives in time to save the day, the majority of viewers will have ceased to take the story seriously. However it's impossible not to admire the efforts of a fine cast to keep up the pretence that this is one of Greene's better entertainments. Sadly, James Scott's 1990 remake, Strike It Lucky, was even worse.

THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT (1957).

Screenwriter Jack Whittingham earned a BAFTA nomination for this forgotten melodrama, which otherwise merely confirmed the extent to which Pat Jackson's directorial career had foundered after his astonishing feature debut with the realist wartime drama, Western Approaches (1944). Having endured a nightmare spell at MGM (during which time he did little but fish), Jackson returned to Britain just as the studio era was coming to an end and worthwhile projects like the NHS paean White Corridors (1951) were proving thin on the ground. This bleak little saga opens with toy salesman Tony Britton buying an expensive watch for wife Sylvia Syms's birthday while on a business trip to Germany. However, in deciding to try and smuggle it through customs inside a toy rather than pay the heavy duty, Britton finds himself in court, where solicitor Marion Crawford makes an unholy mess of his case. Having no money to fund an appeal, Britton does three months in prison and comes home to discover he has been fired. Former workmate Jack Watling tries to rally round, as Britton struggles to find a new job and Syms begins to despair. But old boss Geoffrey Keen has a soft spot for Britton and offers to see what he can do. Ted Scaife's cinematography is as acute as Allan Harris's sets, but Jackson had long abandoned the docudramatic style that made his work so distinctive and this, sadly, could have been directed by anybody.

THE HYPNOTIST (1957).

Adapted from a play by Falkland L. Cary, this is hardly the most suspenseful thriller ever made and it scarcely deserves its racy American title, Scotland Yard Dragnet. But Irish director Montgomery Tully takes his time establishing the premise and is well served by all but one member of his cast. Canadian Paul Carpenter started out as a singer and made his name in this country with Ted Heath's orchestra. He was also popular with postwar radio listeners, as he voiced cowboy Jeff Arnold in the Riders of the Range serial that attracted a weekly audience of 10 million and was spun off by writer Charles Chilton into a strip in the Eagle comic. However, when he stood in front of a camera (without the supported of Percy Edwards voicing Rustler the dog), Carpenter cut an awkward figure and he is far from convincing here, as a test pilot who begins suffering blackouts after a crash and allows devoted fiancée Patricia Roc to talk him into seeing psychiatrist Roland Culver. He uses hypnotism as part of his therapy. But, following one relapse, Culver informs him that there has been a murder. It reflects badly on Inspector William Hartnell and Detective Sergeant Gordon Needham that they don't twig straight away who killed Culver's wife, especially as he is besotted with Roc. But the telling of the tale matters more than whodunit here and Culver revels in exploiting his hapless dupe and charming the typically effective Roc. As for the eager, but limited Carpenter, he tragically perished in a car crash in 1964 at the age of 43.

PART-TIME WIFE (1961).

Although one of the main characters hails from Canada, it's Australia that unites director Max Varnel and antagonist Kenneth J. Warren. The latter was born Down Under and became a familiar face on British screens before succumbing to a heart attack at 43, while the latter (who was the Paris-born son of 1930s comedy director Marcel Varnel) wound up working on such classic Aussie series as Skippy and Neighbours. Varnel directs this cross between PG Wodehouse and Brian Rix with a taut breeziness that just about disguises the fact it was produced on a typical Danziger brothers shoestring. Warren is an old army buddy of struggling insurance salesman Anton Rodgers, who lives in a tiny flat with new wife Nyree Dawn Porter (who, to complete the Dominion trio, was a native of New Zealand). Boss Raymond Rollett insists his staff show moral fibre at all times, but Rodgers in such dire need of a sizeable commission that he falls in with Warren's scheme to convince rich Canadian uncle Henry McCarthy that he is happily married and ready to inherit his thriving car hire firm. However, McCarthy stays longer than expected and the strain of Porter posing as Warren's model spouse begins to tell on Rodgers, as the action shifts from offices to bedrooms and police cells. Ably played by leads who would go on to better things, this is shamelessly contrived in the best farce tradition. But it amuses throughout, as detectives Mark Singleton and Neil Hallett are joined in snooping around the harassed ménage by nosy neighbour Susan Richards.

THE KITCHEN (1961).

Released the year before Chips With Everything made him the toast of the West End, this adaptation of Arnold Wesker's first play is, literally, a kitchen sink drama, as it turns around a hectic evening at the posh Tivoli restaurant in London. Basing the story on his own experiences at the Restaurant Le Rallye on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris (where Auguste and Louis Lumière gave the first cinema show to a paying audience in December 1895), Wesker uses the nightly routine to exacerbate the tensions between the staff cramped together in a small space. During the relatively calm preparation period and the pre-rush break, German chef Carl Möhner presses the buttons of his co-workers as his frustration with waitress lover Mary Yeomans grows more heated. Racist and dyspeptic, he criticises owner Eric Pohlmann, teases newcomer Brian Phelan about his enthusiasm and picks fights with experienced colleagues Frank Pettitt, Scott Finch, Gertan Klauber, Howard Greene, Martin Boddey and George Eugeniou, who are either all besotted with female members of staff or fed up with their skills going unappreciated. Möhner even has a pop at night porter Josef Behrmann and idealistic pastry chef Tom Bell, while dismissing the efforts of James Bolam to lighten the mood by dancing with a broom and Sean Lynch to restore some peace. But his mood darkens when head chef Charles Lloyd Pack begins service and Möhner's realisation that Yeomans is not going to leave her affluent husband (despite twice becoming pregnant during their affair) pushes him closer to the edge. Wesker was perhaps the angriest of the young men who took British theatre by storm in the late 1950s and bile drips from a screenplay written by Sidney Cole (who had been supervising editor at Ealing between 1942-52) to stress the ethnic, class and gender tensions in a kitchen that was clearly intended to be a microcosm of contemporary society. Fresh off winning an Oscar for his delightful documentary short, Giussepina (1960), James Hill directs with a sure hand and, even though he comes close on a couple of occasions to letting things boil over, this makes a fine companion piece to his next feature, Lunch Hour (1961), which was adapted from another stage work, this time by John Mortimer.