... because I'm just not getting the "clever and thrilling" vibe everybody else did.
This popped up on youtube, and I decided to watch it because William Hartnell is a very talented actor, and nothing bad that happens here can be laid at his feet, so I guessed right there. But that script is just so improbable to the point of being laughable.
The film opens with a newspaper publisher scolding a reporter for being lazy by talking about when he was a cub reporter 15 years before covering the Masterick case. Tom Masterick (William Hartnell) was a stevedore at the time, and married to an unfaithful wife who was cheating on him with fellow dockworker Fred Smith. When Tom finds out about the affair, he tracks down Fred to a local pub and he starts a fight with him that culminates in Tom taking a sword down off the pub wall and chasing Fred all the way to the port where they work, chasing Fred up a tall crane, and then Fred loses his balance and falls into the water. Weeks pass and Fred is missing and presumed dead by the police. Tom is charged with and convicted of Fred's murder after a body is found in the water matching Fred's description (dental records anybody?) . But the circumstances have the jury calling for lenience and Tom is sentenced to 15 years rather than hanging.
So in present day Tom gets out of jail. He knows Fred is alive because he saw him AFTER he supposedly killed him but could not prove his story, so now he is going to track him down. So far, the movie has consisted of a fairly hackneyed wrong man/ wronged man melodrama, but this is where it gets completely silly. Tom doesn't have to do much tracking. He easily finds his former wife who actually LIVED with Fred for the first ten years he was in jail. He then easily finds Fred himself running a pub under his right name. Why didn't anybody, including Fred, tell the authorities this guy was alive and where he was? Nobody apparently hated Tom, yet they let him rot in jail. And that editor who was telling this story to prove he was a great cub reporter in his day? Why was he not able to easily find Fred? I think he needs to ease up on that cub reporter he is scolding.
Now for all of the little things - At the end of 15 years Tom is completely gray as in white haired, and all stooped over like a man of 60 or more when he was a young vital dockworker fifteen years before. But everybody he knew including his former wife and Fred look EXACTLY like they did fifteen years before, His daughter looked to be 8-10 when Fred was imprisoned yet does not even recognize him or apparently remember her last name of Masterick from childhood. And I'll leave the ending for you to see, but it is a truly preposterous ending to a preposterous film.
I was going to rate this even lower than I did, but there were two mitigating factors. One is Hartnell - even in this weird movie he excels in his role. The other is the fact that this film was made in Britain just as WWII was ending after five years of being constantly bombarded by the Germans. Thus they probably did not have that much in the way of money and talent behind the camera to do better than this.
This popped up on youtube, and I decided to watch it because William Hartnell is a very talented actor, and nothing bad that happens here can be laid at his feet, so I guessed right there. But that script is just so improbable to the point of being laughable.
The film opens with a newspaper publisher scolding a reporter for being lazy by talking about when he was a cub reporter 15 years before covering the Masterick case. Tom Masterick (William Hartnell) was a stevedore at the time, and married to an unfaithful wife who was cheating on him with fellow dockworker Fred Smith. When Tom finds out about the affair, he tracks down Fred to a local pub and he starts a fight with him that culminates in Tom taking a sword down off the pub wall and chasing Fred all the way to the port where they work, chasing Fred up a tall crane, and then Fred loses his balance and falls into the water. Weeks pass and Fred is missing and presumed dead by the police. Tom is charged with and convicted of Fred's murder after a body is found in the water matching Fred's description (dental records anybody?) . But the circumstances have the jury calling for lenience and Tom is sentenced to 15 years rather than hanging.
So in present day Tom gets out of jail. He knows Fred is alive because he saw him AFTER he supposedly killed him but could not prove his story, so now he is going to track him down. So far, the movie has consisted of a fairly hackneyed wrong man/ wronged man melodrama, but this is where it gets completely silly. Tom doesn't have to do much tracking. He easily finds his former wife who actually LIVED with Fred for the first ten years he was in jail. He then easily finds Fred himself running a pub under his right name. Why didn't anybody, including Fred, tell the authorities this guy was alive and where he was? Nobody apparently hated Tom, yet they let him rot in jail. And that editor who was telling this story to prove he was a great cub reporter in his day? Why was he not able to easily find Fred? I think he needs to ease up on that cub reporter he is scolding.
Now for all of the little things - At the end of 15 years Tom is completely gray as in white haired, and all stooped over like a man of 60 or more when he was a young vital dockworker fifteen years before. But everybody he knew including his former wife and Fred look EXACTLY like they did fifteen years before, His daughter looked to be 8-10 when Fred was imprisoned yet does not even recognize him or apparently remember her last name of Masterick from childhood. And I'll leave the ending for you to see, but it is a truly preposterous ending to a preposterous film.
I was going to rate this even lower than I did, but there were two mitigating factors. One is Hartnell - even in this weird movie he excels in his role. The other is the fact that this film was made in Britain just as WWII was ending after five years of being constantly bombarded by the Germans. Thus they probably did not have that much in the way of money and talent behind the camera to do better than this.