Movie Review – Eight O’Clock Walk (1954)

Director: Lance Comfort

Stars: Richard Attenborough, Cathy O’Donnell, Derek Farr, Ian Hunter, Maurice Denham, Harry Welchman, Totti Truman Taylor

Tom (Attenborough) is a cab driver who gets accused of murdering a girl that played an April Fool’s joke on him.

It shows how times have changed I suppose but the April Fool’s jokes shown at the beginning were terrible. Sending a note through a letterbox marked ‘Urgent’, then when it’s opened it reads ‘April Fool’s’, pretending that you lost your doll and crying to get someone to look for it, shouting and pointing to the sky to get people to stop what they’re doing and look up. Those rapscallions!

Seriously though, the movie begins with a whimsical tone but soon turns to a dark tension as Tom is accused of murder. One thing I found weirdly interesting is the attitudes to justice. At one point one of the characters implies that Tom has to prove his innocence, which goes against the usual ‘innocent until proven guilty’. I’m not sure whether it was just the time or whether this film got things very wrong, but the legal defence was shocking. They expected to defend the case without even meeting the client! Is this really how things were done? Surely they’d at least want to advise him on how to act and what to say and what questions he could expect? Very strange. At one point the judge welcomes a young boy to sit by him as well, and I’m not sure that’s proper protocol either!

I thought O’Donnell was good as the wife who tried her hardest to support her husband, even though most of the time she wasn’t allowed to see him. I also enjoyed how the film showed that life goes on around these things. One humorous moment had a woman describe a grisly murder but quickly segue into happily chatting about the whether as if the two subjects were related. Often throughout the film ordinary life is depicted as being more important than the case, whether it’s the judge’s wife being in hospital or a witness rushing out of court so she can get her husband some underwear that are on sale. Taken in isolation these can feel like undeveloped subplots as they don’t really go anywhere or have an impact on the main story, but I think it’s a comment on how people tend to get obsessed over these trials but return so quickly to ordinary life, when really a man’s life hangs in the balance.

There are a couple of aspects that I think could have improved the film as well. When I read the synopsis I assumed that Eight O’ Clock Walk referred to the time when the girl was murdered, but I read that it’s actually about the walk to the gallows. However, I feel they could have easily change the time of the walk in the film so that it matched the reference and gave the title a double meaning. There were also a couple of shots early on of a shadowy figure that made it clear Tom wasn’t the murderer, and while this sets up the finale it does drain the film of some tension during the middle.

I quite enjoyed it though, although it’s not one I’d rave about. The courtroom antics are certainly different than what we come to expect from modern legal dramas so the film is certainly a product of its time.

Movie Review – The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Point of note, I watched the remake of this before I’d seen the original but it’s been a while so I won’t be doing a huge comparison between the two. 

Over the past few years I’ve become a big fan of James Stewart and he gives a pretty good performance as the conflicted pilot Frank Towns, as the plane he’s flying crashes in the middle of a desert. Without much water and without much hope the survivors of the crash have to band together to try and find some way to survive. Nearly every one of them has different ideas on how to accomplish that, but it’s only through the calculating and impassive Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger) that they have any real chance of escaping their hellish fate. 

I like survival stories and as this one goes it’s pretty good. I think the major players here give good performances and I was especially impressed with Richard Attenborough who portrayed every complicated facet of the navigator. The rest of the cast were okay, some of the survivors were just there for window dressing and they didn’t get much development. Others were cannon fodder, although we got a glimpse into their character. Hardy Kruger was excellent and the tension between him and James Stewart was one of the highlights of the film. 

The other aspect of this film which really stood out for me was the make-up. It looked very disturbing and realistic as their skin cracked and welts broke out on their faces and hands. This, coupled with the actors’ skill at showing the deterioration of their spirits, sold the situation and gave the film an authentic feel. 

Some of it didn’t work, however. I thought the Arabs were just inserted to give the final act a bit of added danger rather than adding anything relevant to the story. They didn’t contribute to the climax in any way and they just felt out of place. I also didn’t like Watson’s story, I may have missed the relevant part because I was pretty tired when I watched the first half (I watched it in two parts) but I didn’t really understand why he was acting like such a douche. The film also dragged a lot as well. It was very slow-paced and that did help the mood because it’s what the survivors must have felt like, but I felt the film could have been trimmed a little. It was just 20-30 minutes too long. 

The cast helps to bring something to the movie but it drags a little bit and if you don’t like drama between characters you’ll hate this film because really the only conflict comes between the characters. It’s not a bad film but I wouldn’t say it’s a great one either and it’s not one that I’m especially eager to re-watch.