The Worst Film Ever

Perfectly adorable

Perfect cast and a good story

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

When a successful playwright looses his eyesight, he retires to London and becomes a recluse, only coming out to go to a local pub and the theater one of his plays is running at. At the pub, he overhears a plot being hatched, and thanks to old flame Vera Miles comes back to life as he works with Scotland Yard to figure out what it's all about. The senses of the blind are well utilized as his wits take over where his eyes cannot. But there's danger about as his bitterness continues to guide him and Miles begins to feel disillusioned by his increasing distance.Starting off slowly but picking up steam, this is one of those thrillers where the clues don't come often, but when they do, they are extremely important. A tense moment has Johnson nearly falling to his death in an abandoned building, and the sinister villain, remaining unknown other than a voice only Johnson has heard, closes in. Obviously influenced by "Rear Window", this is memorable on its own merits, with Johnson giving one of his best performances. Elsa Lanchaster is amusing as an eccentric (what else?) Barmaid, while a cast of well known British character actors play a variety of droll characters.

Passable suspenser despite a rather muddled script that doesn't acquaint us well with either the suspects or the plot developments. Thus the mystery part minimizes needed involvement. Johnson does an acceptable job feigning a blind man, but perhaps his biggest triumph is removing any sentimentality from Hannon's affliction. Thus the film never, to its credit, descends into the kind of treacle it so easily could have. In fact, Hannon remains understandably irascible throughout.That tightrope struggle on the crumbling roof is a real nail-biter and the film's dramatic highpoint. But frankly the showdown in Hannon's darkened apartment lacks the skillful development of, say, Wait Until Dark (1967), to become memorable. The live London backdrop, however, adds a lot of interesting color and is well photographed. And though she's winsome as heck, Vera Miles is largely wasted in a part that many lesser actresses could have filled. Anyway, the movie's an acceptable time passer with a few good moments, but I'll bet it's not on Scotland Yard's Must-See list.

Nigel Balchin was one of the finest English novelists of his generation and equally facile at screen writing and it was his name rather than that of veteran director Henry Hathaway and definitely not that of wooden actor Van Johnson that attracted me to this one. Once you get over the ridiculous mistakes which no one who doesn't live in or know London well will register - Johnson's address is given as Portman Square which is indeed close to Baker Street but the Thames is a good mile or more away and not, as depicted, right outside his apartment building - this is a classy little thriller if a tad familiar: Johnson, a playwright has recently lost his sight and overhears a conversation (shades of Sorry, Wrong Number) which he interprets as a plot to kidnap someone. From then on the film divides into two halves; 1) get someone to believe him/fake him seriously and 2)track down the perpetrators. It works on both levels even if Maurice Denham's policeman is a little too dim and a little too eager to let an 'amateur' have his head. Certainly worth seeing.

I saw this film a number of years ago, with someone very special, and just before the cineplex facilities effected closing the majority of the conventional, free-standing movie theaters in large cities and small. Just saw it again, after a number of years.We sat in the balcony, and, having always enjoyed Van Johnson's work, I enjoyed this clever, interesting story even more than if the lead had been someone else.With all of the elements and twists one finds with Hitchcock, the fact of the principal character's blindness is effective and adds a dimension to the mystery/thriller aspects of the film. (Of course, this handicap is necessary, since a sighted person would have seen what he overhears in the pub, setting-off the drama changing the story's essence. And, it adds to the quality of the story that this factor is not exaggerated or "hokey," and everything surrounding it is logical and believable.)There are the two primary co-stars with Johnson, and absent are the greater number of characters surrounding the leads which one would normally expect to find - and the movie is better for this.Van Johnson, who is now 90, in my opinion is underrated as a talent. He had boyish, casual good looks, and came into film as a leading man during a period when as handsome as they were, most leading men always seemed to have a pint of Wildroot or Brilliantine in their hair (e.g. Tyrone Power, Flynn, Robert Taylor). He played light comedy, serio-comedy love stories, and serious roles with talented, versatile performances. Like Alan Ladd, although not regarded in this capacity, he'd had experience as a male chorus member/dancer in earlier career - during the era when more of the nightclub/review type of entertainment was present.This film is interesting, with a neat, tight story, engaging characters and performances - and now that it is 50 years since its release, it also provides a nostalgic look at a film from the mid-1950's, with that period's "noir" characteristics.