BY TIM GREAVES
Director Daniel Birt's
1952 crime drama The Night Won't Talk
arrives on DVD in the UK as an integrant of Network Distributing's impressive,
ongoing 'The British Film' collection.
In the wake of her murder
via strangulation it transpires that artists' model Stella Smith was a serial
gold-digger, the string of discarded and disgruntled dupes left in her
avaricious wake constituting a healthy number of suspects. Stella's
husband-to-be, artist Clayton Hawks (John Bailey), can't be certain that he himself
isn't the murderer; given to outbursts of uncontrolled rage, he was in the
throes of a stress-induced blackout at the time. With Inspector West (Ballard
Berkeley) breathing down his neck, Clayton – assisted by two friends, model
Hazel (Mary Germaine) and fellow artist Theo (Hy Hazell) – sets out to uncover
the truth.
Daniel Birt lensed a
number of serviceable potboilers throughout the 40s and early 50s, among them Third Party Risk, Three Weird Sisters and The
Interrupted Journey. Running a couple of minutes short of an hour, The Night Won't Talk barely really qualifies
as a feature film but back in the day it constituted solid and efficient
A-feature support; it's a workmanlike and talky, yet never less than engaging serving
of Brit noir whodunnit – even if the identity of the ‘who’ that ‘dunnit’ ultimately
proves no great surprise.
John Bailey plays shifty convincingly
enough (even though there's never any doubt he isn't the killer), whilst
the resident feminine allure, in the shape of Hy Hazell and Hazel Germaine,
proves to be more than just decorous; Hazell is particularly good. Law
enforcement is represented by Ballard Berkeley (an actor for whom B-movie
police inspectors were a stock in trade back in the 50s, even though he’s
probably best remembered now for his latterday turn as the bumbling Major in TV
comedy classic Fawlty Towers) and a
perpetually pipe-nursing Duncan Lamont; the duo weed through the slew of
suspects with such insouciance it's a miracle they actually solve the case at
all, though naturally they come rushing in at the climax just in time to
prevent another fatality.
Most of the characters, both
male and female, speak in the clipped, dreadfully proper English of the "I
say, old man" ilk, there's a memorably imaginative and effectively rendered
moment involving the killer's shadow, and although much of the production is
set-bound there's some atmospheric footage of period River Thames at twilight
(Hazell's character resides on a houseboat).
Never threatening to reach
the lofty heights of gripping, The Night
Won't Talk still makes for a pretty decent hour's watch, and Network's
1.37:1 ratio DVD presentation delivers a clean and sharp transfer (taken from
the original film elements) which only falters in one of two brief instances of
missing frames. The sole supplement is a gallery of original release
promotional materials.
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