Uncle Silas

One of the great masterworks of the cinema is a British film for Two Cities by a Belgy, as Hercule Poirot would say.

Lean has the precedence of him by one year in Great Expectations, on the other hand Dickinson’s The Queen of Spades is one year later.

The substance of the montages like the score is Powell & Pressburger and might have by its consistency influenced Jack Clayton’s editing. A consciousness of Orson Welles is evident. Ken Russell has his avatars.

“It was a rum idea”, says Time Out Film Guide of this most brilliant work, “lacking a strong director”.

Halliwell’s Film Guide just succeeds in noting, along for the ride, that it is “superbly made”.

Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander accepts this as a tributary and sees it go “unvexed to the sea.”