writers_reign Unless you happened to see the play - by Robert Ardrey - on which the Boulting Brothers based their film then the only selling point is Michael Redgrave. By 1942 he was a seasoned film actor having served a distinguished apprenticeship in the theatre and although it did no harm to feature the likes of James Mason, Finlay Currie, Barbara Mullen and Lily Palmer in support by this stage of his film career Redgrave was fully capable of carrying a picture by himself. It is, of course, also necessary to remember that the film was shot in 1942 and released the following year, in other words right in the heart of World War II so it would be foolish if not futile not to expect a large propaganda element which now seems irrelevant. Bearing that in mind and making allowances this remains a half decent effort with Redgrave delivering the goods.

clanciai A Boulting brothers film is always a stunning treat if you are interested in humanity. They always choose very special topics that touch the very core of humanity and bring out all kinds of fascinating insights focusing on the treasures of human experience. This film was made during the darkest hours of the war in 1942, when Singapore was lost and the darkness of dictatorship and its violence reached its farthest limits and leading intellectuals and writers of the world committed suicide, like Stefan Zweig, and somehow the writer of this story (Bernard Miles, a great actor himself,) gets to the very heart of darkness of humanity and history. It is therefore one of those very rare and extremely metaphysical films.Michael Redgrave has given up on the world and is looking forward to the end of humanity and civilization, he doesn't care any more about anything as he wasted his best years on a lonesome crusade against fascism in Europe with no response at all, since people allowed the war to come anyway, so he absconds into a remote lighthouse beyond everything, where he doesn't even read books. But he finds the log book of of a ship of immigrants that went down by this lighthouse in 1849 with 60 lives lost. He buries himself in this manifestation of a cruel and unjust fate killing 60 innocent people, and in trying to understand this destiny he brings them back alive. Are they ghosts or are they real? They are real enough to him, and he is not alone in having made the experience that ghosts can be more alive than live people.The film exploits this strange field of occult metaphysics and succeeds in realizing all their different fates, that is six of them, including the captain (Finlay Currie), a Viennese doctor and his wife and daughter (Lilli Palmer), a suffragette 70 years ahead of her time and another family with a Dickensian background of hardship. As their stories develop and get more real the deeper you get into them, the web of humanity grows constantly more touching and convincing in its realism and gripping honesty, ultimately leading to the conclusion that there is always something left to do, you can't get rid of your human and universal responsibility whatever your disillusionment with the world might be, and, of course, the whole thing leads to a release of serenity.Someone said it was one of the most impressive movies in her experience, and I tend to agree. Even the music is perfect, somewhat reminiscent of a violin romance by Sibelius. This is a film for all times with a universal message that never can lose its actuality.

becky-bradway Holy sh*t, was this a peculiar movie! Slow moving but oddly compelling look at a writer's psyche. A war correspondent desperately wants to awaken Britain's awareness of fascism and the inevitable war and dismally fails -- and this is all shown in flashback. The correspondent is shown as an isolated fellow in a lighthouse on the Great Lakes, post-war, who becomes obsessed with the story of drowned immigrants who never reach the lighthouse a hundred years before (get the connection?), dying at sea. And the story then becomes what he imagines their lives to have been, growing in complexity and realism as he comes to terms with his own defeats. I've never seen the writing process so accurately shown in a film as he talks to the characters in his mind and continues to revise their lives before our eyes. An ambitious film that doesn't entirely work, but that I found fascinating and moving. Michael Redgrave is terrific, too, and James Mason, who appears too briefly, has a really cute wave in his hair (ha).

Signet The sheer tedium of the pacing was enough to make me want to turn this WW II propaganda film off, but I was determined to see it through. The message, however, came stomping over my hopes for some redemption from a very solid cast with unquestioned talents. Sadly, they didn't stand a chance with this gray, grim material that was meant to convey a very plain and unadorned message: Oppression is bad, liberty is good. It is impossible to disagree, but this movie was so drawn out, so yawn-worthy, that it almost undercut the sentiment. Not one of the better products of the difficult war years from Britain's film industry. And, alas, Michael Wilding's central performance was such a sorry one-note of morose self-pity that it was extremely difficult even to want to empathize with him. Times were tough for the British during the Forties but at least they couldn't have been this boring.