The Vicious Circle is a British thriller film first released in 1957, directed by Gerald Thomas.  The film stars John Mills, Derek Farr, Noelle Middleton, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Roland Culver.  It has also been released under the title: The Circle.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


One evening, Harley Street doctor Howard Latimer is visited by a journalist, Geoffrey Windsor, who is keen to write an article about his work.  During this unwelcome intrusion, Latimer receives a phone call from an American friend asking him to collect Frieda Veldon, a German actress, from London airport.  Windsor offers to drive Latimer to the airport and the doctor has no choice but to accept.  A short while later, Latimer finds Veldon lying dead in his apartment, apparently murdered.   Naturally, the good doctor reports the killing to the police but he soon finds that he is the prime suspect.  Investigating the case, Detective Inspector Dane soon uncovers enough evidence to send Latimer to the scaffold, but the doctor insists he is innocent.  Whilst hiding out at his friend’s apartment, Latimer receives a visit from a suspicious-looking man who claims to have proof that will allow him to clear his name...

The year before producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas created one of the most enduring and popular phenomena in British cinema, the Carry On series, they collaborated on this slick noir thriller, one of the team’s few diversions from comedy.  Scripted by the prominent writer Francis Durbridge (of Paul Temple fame), the film is one of the most convoluted examples of its genre and will give you terminal apoplexy if you try to follow every twist and turn of the devious plot.  But that doesn’t prevent it from being fun.

Although it was made on a modest budget, The Vicious Circle is an inspired piece of filmmaking and stands up very well against the better known British film noir classics.  The lighting and camerawork have a distinctly noirish feel to them and add to the sense of hopeless entrapment in which the main protagonist finds himself, an unsuspecting fly caught in a sinister web of intrigue.  Superb performances from John Mills and Derek Farr are shored up by fine supporting contributions from Wilfrid Hyde-White and Lionel Jeffries, although if you look closely enough you can see that each of these great talents has his tongue firmly in his cheek. 

The Vicious Circle looks too much like a pastiche of a Hitchcock thriller to be taken too seriously (Durbridge was obviously influenced by The 39 Steps), and the plot contrivances become a little too hard to swallow after a while.  Still, Thomas directs the film with aplomb and keeps us hooked and guessing right up until the implausible well-I-never denouement.  Imagine how much better this film might have been if had been made as an out-and-out comedy...

© Steve Chandler 2010

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