JB Priestley’s drawing-room melodrama of Edwardian guilt and fear is rereleased for its 70th anniversary; it is an intricate clockwork mechanism ticking inexorably to the final reveal, with beautiful monochrome cinematography and thoroughbred character-actor faces looming out of the screen like a bad dream. It was adapted by Desmond Davis from Priestley’s stage play, directed by Guy Hamilton and unforgettably stars Alastair Sim as the implacable Inspector Poole, with his cool professional insolence, a needling, insinuating manner and sonorously droll voice; it is a performance to put alongside Sim’s Scrooge and his Professor Potter in School for Scoundrels.
It is 1912, and the inspector arrives unexpectedly at the sumptuous home of well-to-do magistrate and captain of industry Arthur Birling (Arthur Young), who is hosting a dinner party to celebrate his daughter Sheila (Eileen Moore) getting engaged to a local well-born chap, Gerald Croft (Brian Worth). Birling preens himself insufferably on this new social connection and his own forthcoming knighthood, and his wife Sybil (Olga Lindo) is resplendent in respectability, presiding over a charitable organisation of patrician ladies doling out small sums for the deserving poor. Meanwhile, her son Eric (played by the future titan of British film, Bryan Forbes) is a highly strung wastrel, worrying his mother and sister with his drinking. George Cole – famously mentored in the business by Sim himself – has a small role as a tram conductor; he and Moore were to be married, having met on this film.
