Green for Danger (1946) - film review

August 1944.  A postman injured in a V1 bombardment of southern England dies during an operation at a country hospital.  No one takes seriously the suggestion that foul play is involved until a second murder is committed.  Nurse Bates is stabbed to death shortly after dramatically announcing that she knows who killed the postman.   Inspector Cockrill relishes the opportunity of solving the mystery, but soon discovers that everyone present at the first murder had a motive, and that the killer is quite prepared to strike again...

Possibly the best film to come out of the immensely successful partnership of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder is this mischievously tongue-in-cheek thriller whodunit featuring some of the best British actors of its time.  It’s a classic of its kind, benefiting from an ingenious plot, well developed characters, and a mood that is keenly evocative of England during WWII – a film that will appeal to any aficionado of Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries.    

Wilkie Cooper’s high art cinematography, most probably influenced by American film noir, gives the film its tense, highly charged atmosphere, lending a sinister dreamlike character to several of its more disturbing passages.   Most memorable is the chilling build up to the second murder, which uses some stylish expressionistic camerawork to heighten the tension and convey the escalating terror of the victim, in a way that even Alfred Hitchcock would have been hard pressed to improve on.   A propos, Gilliat and Launder had earlier written the screenplay for the Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes (1938).

Without a shadow of a doubt, Green for Danger’s biggest attraction is Alastair Sim, who, as Scotland Yard’s most whimsical police inspector, gives what has to be one of the finest performances of a very distinguished career.  His Inspector Cockrill is a wonderful concoction of charm, sly cunning and hapless ineptitude, part authority figure, part clown, somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Inspecteur Clouseau.   There are some impressive contributions from the rest of the cast – particularly Rosamund John, Trevor Howard, Sally Gray and Judy Campbell (the mother of Jane Birkin) – but it is Alastair Sim who is the star.  He seizes the focus from the moment he first appears on the screen and never lets it go for a second as he sleuths his way to the bottom of a mystery that would have left Sherlock Holmes chewing disconsolately on his fourth pipe.

© James Travers 2008

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