My researches into Awful British Comedians led me to the rather special BACK-ROOM BOY with Arthur Askey and thus to Herbert Mason, its director, who showed real chops. I needed to see more of this guy’s work.
Mason worked in the ABC subgenre more than once, but the first film we watched was A WINDOW IN LONDON (1940), aka LADY IN DISTRESS, a moody quasi-thriller which turns out to be — unsurprisingly, once the plot has finished playing out — a remake of a French noiresque thing called METROPOLITAIN (1939), which was directed by one Maurice Cam — very stylishly — and starred Albert Prejean and Ginette Leclerc. French poetic realist fatalism with a working-class couple who don’t get to spend any time together because he works days and she works nights. both get into trouble in a rather dramatically overcrowded day and night (and morning).
Mason’s version of this sack of grim ironies stars Michael Redgrave and Phyllis Calvert as Couple Number One, with the work-life-balance problems, Paul Lukas and Sally Gray as Couple Number Two, an egomaniac magician and his glamorous assistant, whose problems may be altogether more deadly, and which start to suck in Redgrave when they meet up. Odd to see Redgrave as just a regular working bloke, but he does it well. Maybe this guy will get bit by the showbiz bug and take up ventriloquism?
Cam’s film is stylish and risque. Mason’s, in its own way, is just as good. If I hadn’t seen and been impressed by another of his movies I’d have bet he borrowed his most striking effects from the French original, but this is not so.
There’s an amazing scene with no equivalent in the French version: Redgrave and Gray are talking, getting maybe romantically entangled, at his building site place of work after dark (where Westminster Bridge is under construction). The night watchman can only sort of hear them. Their dialogue keeps fading in and out, muffled and then amplified by atmospherics. As he listens with interest, the camera pushes in a touch, synchronised to the rise of the voices, then halts its advances as the voices fade… then they start up again and we push in again. Four little push-ins in total. Riveting — and very, very unusual. Somebody should steal it. But change it up, don’t just DePalma the thing.
The story suffers a bit from seeming to posit a thriller scenario — man sees murder from train window — a scenario that’s served for several subsequent thrillers — but then discards it — tracked down, the murderer produces his still-living victim and claims that the apparent assault was an abandoned attempt at a suicide pact. Moments later it transpires that the couple were merely rehearsing a stage act with a fake knife. So the jeopardy and emotional temperature gets dialled way down and we start to wonder if this is a thriller at all. I’m still not certain — but it’s for sure a melodrama, and a very interesting one. Amour fou times two.
Stage magician Jasper Maskelyn is credited as technical advisor for the stage magic — I know his name because of his war work, using illusionism to deceive the enemy — turns out you can cheaply fake up a bunch of tanks, convincing to aerial reconnaissance, with flat bits of balsa cut to the appropriate plan.
I was able to see METROPOLITAIN in a lovely glossy form, but AWIL is AWOL — the only copy I could get is a very fuzzy off-air recording. An analogue of the French and British approach to cinema, or to the relative popular appeal of Prejean and Redgrave? NO! It turns out you can see the film legitimately on the BFI Player for just £2.50 if you’re in the UK (or have a suitable VPN, I guess). It’s well worth it.
STOP PRESS: It’s on YouTube!
A WINDOW IN LONDON stars Maxwell Frere; The Nurses: Nurse Freddi Linley; Prof. Pierre Aronnax; Lloyd Hastings; Angela Labardi; Sally – Jellyband’s Daughter; Phil Corkery; Ned Horton; General Faversham; and Mr. Snedrig.
shadowplay 