The Interrupted Journey

A writer leaves his mistress aboard the train for Plymouth and returns to his wife after a sudden apprehension of fear that creates one of the great nightmare effects in the cinema, his work is mainly rejected, he agrees to work for his father-in-law in fertilizer, the mistress is married to an editor who has bought several of the writer’s stories, she admires his talent.

Radley Metzger has a beautiful arrangement of the writer’s predicament in The Image, this is of the greatest interest and directly bears upon the present instance.

For the private detective, let us imagine a critic though we need not, for here is Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review dismissing the work out of hand, Halliwell likewise, despite or indeed because of Birt’s undoubted abilities as a director (the BFI points out members of the film crew listed among the dead in one of the newspaper articles covering the horrible collision of the passenger train and a goods train behind it).

“Chattanooga Choo Choo” was America’s favorite song when the war began, “Sentimental Journey” when it ended, describing as it were the title of this film.