Cottage to Let (1941) - film review

When Mrs Barrington puts her cottage up for let she gets far more than she bargained for.  It is wartime and the cottage serves as a military hospital, although the only patient being treated on the premises is Flight Lieutenant Perry, who injured himself when he parachuted from his Spitfire.  Mrs Barrington had promised the cottage to child evacuees, but when Mr Charles Dimble turns up claiming to have let the cottage through an estate agent, the children have to go elsewhere.  One of these is a boy named Ronald, whom Mrs Barrington takes in at her own home.  Ronald learns that his hostess’s husband, John, is an inventor working on a bombsight for the Royal Air Force.  Ronald isn’t the only one interested in John Barrington’s work however.  Nazi agents are operating in the area and intend to kidnap the inventor and take him back to Germany...

The wartime propaganda and homeland defence messages are laid on a bit thick in this thriller mystery, but not enough to spoil its entertainment value.  In a remarkable film debut, 16-year-old George Cole manages to out-shine a cast which includes some of the finest British actors of the period: Alastair Sim, John Mills and Leslie Banks.  Cole went on to become a much-loved star of British film and television in a career spanning almost seventy years, but he is of course best remembered for the part of Arthur Daley in the hit TV series Minder.

Cottage to Let was adapted from a hit stage play, performed in 1940, in which most of the leads  in the film (notably Sim and Cole) had appeared.  The biggest surprise is that Mills, usually cast as the good guy, gets to play the principle baddie, and a nasty one at that.  Although the film is a little dated, marred by some clunky direction and cheap studio exteriors that singularly fail to evoke the Scottish setting, it still retains a great deal of charm.

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