Murder on Monday

R.C. Sherriff’s Home at Seven, a hit on the London stage with Richardson.

We shall compare the film to Laughton in The Suspect (dir. Robert Siodmak), if we have our wits about us.

Two cinematographers and two cameramen, of the best, rather a mystery there and yet not, as we shall see.

A fixed acuity in all the pictures, a painterly composition each, school of Ben Nicholson, Seurat, the classics. This to train attention on the actors, the editing contains their singular effects one by one or two or more, in a steadily pulsating rhythm like Sir Adrian Boult on the podium, or perhaps Sir Thomas Beecham.

The inspiration of the director is to open the play up, as one says, by going inward, a resource of the cinema allied to certain effects of the stage known in Shakespeare’s time, a scene within revealed.

The war, where was one, what happened, oh yes, that missed day.

One of Malcolm Arnold’s best scores, De Grunwald screenplay, Korda settings, Fisher assistant cameraman, Hamilton assistant director, Mathieson on the podium and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

All lost on A.W. of the New York Times of course, “a bit too sedate”.

Variety, too, which noted the Korda production plan but not the film beyond “a straightforward competence.”

Time Out, “modest suspenser.”

Leonard Maltin, “taut thriller”.

Utterly lost on Halliwell’s Film Guide, citing the Monthly Film Bulletin’s “notable absence of imagination”.