Load of rubbish!!

Absolutely Fantastic

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

A North London cab driver, Tom Manning (Richard Attenborough), agrees to help a little girl find her doll on a bombsite, but it turns out she is playing an April Fools on him and she runs away. He chases after her with the intention of "giving her a talking to" but she outruns him and he goes off to work thinking nothing more of it. However, the following day he is arrested as the child has been found murdered on the bombsite and there are witnesses who saw him with her and chasing angrily after her. In addition, the police have found his handkerchief that he gave to the child beside the body. Tom's loyal and devoted wife, Jill (Cathy O' Donnell), wins the sympathy and services of Junior Counsel Peter Tanner (Derek Farr) who agrees to defend her husband when the attorney scheduled to do it falls ill. He proves to be a first rate lawyer, but the prosecution's case seems rock solid and he will need a real lucky break to save him from the gallows...Minor courtroom thriller with a plot that may well have been cutting edge at the time, but now seems unremarkable since it has been done several times and a lot better since. Nevertheless, director Lance Comfort keeps it well afloat with a good emphasis on character and, at times, the anxiety, anguish and tension seem really genuine and the performances of Attenborough and O' Donnell are superb as the newly married couple whose lives are put through sheer hell as they fight to clear his name. There is a really powerful scene where Attenborough sees the prison doctor who points to a flying accident he once had and implies that he may have had a blackout and committed the crime but had no recollection of doing so. "They try to make excuses for you; try to find reasonings for things you never thought of at the time and you begin to wonder if you really did do it", he tells O' Donnell as she visits him in jail. His thoughts and feelings seem realistic to us, the viewers, and we can sympathise with his plight since it seems that the police in the film do not really care if Manning is innocent or not and are solely interested in getting a conviction and that's it even if it means the real killer may remain at large and the wrong man goes to the gallows for it. The film does, however, get static in the courtroom scenes and they carry very little in the way of suspense. In addition, I was disappointed in the battle between the prosecution Counsel, Ian Hunter, and the defence attorney, Derek Farr, since in the story they are playing father and son and are opposing each other at the bar and that was not as well developed nor as effective as I thought it should be.

A melodrama that looks at the legal system that suddenly adds dashes of Perry Mason into the mix. Richard Attenborough plays a local friendly cabbie who gets trick or treated by a gang of kids early in the morning. He goes after them more in jest and later helps one of the girl's looking for her lost doll in the streets of post war London which still was littered with bomb sitesWhen the young girl is found dead Attenborough turns out to be the wrong man in the wrong place but all the evidence, circumstantial it might be points to him being the murderer. Of course we know it's not him as we see a man in a bowler hat shown in silhouette who approached he girl after Attenborough left the girl and this shadowy man pops up later on. It really wants you to shout out 'its that man again' every time you see himAttenborough's wife has a hard time to get a criminal solicitor who believes in his innocent, only later a dogged barrister reluctantly turns detective in order to unmask the real culpritThe film has a very realistic location setting of the post war London with kids running about on their own. Even the reluctance of the lawyers to take the case on was very much on the mark. The latter part of the film based on some random circumstances allowing the Barrister to think it the murderer is someone else and nearby is rather convenient but the film just about gets away with it.

Highly watchable courtroom drama set in London during Coronation year. In fact the trial that takes up the bulk of the film's running time begins on 8 June 1953 (shown in a close-up of the Court listings), a week after the Queen was crowned. Occasional glimpses of ornamental arches celebrating the event can be seen in the background of the film's many location shots. The film also gives an insight into post-war Britain - a land where young married couples (Attenborough and O'Donnell) live in cramped lodgings whilst waiting to qualify for their own house; where children play truant on derelict bombsites; and where the legal system looks down on - or at best, patronises - the lower orders. The plot veers to the melodramatic in the closing minutes, but entertainingly so. However, the detailed portrayal of court procedure is fascinating to watch. It probably hasn't changed that much, either....

At the time that this film was made there was a fierce debate about capital punishment.In the early fifties Timothy Evans was wrongly hung for murders committed by Christie.Then Derek Bentley was hung for a murder he did not commit,merely present when the actual murderer fired the weapon.The actual murderer went to jail as he was too young to hang.So this film sets up a perfect set of circumstances where an innocent man could be convicted of murder.It is only because of the theatrical contrivances that in fact Attenborough goes free.The trial in the film is fairly brief in that it appears to last a couple of days.frighteningly that is the way it was.At times it was all about "pour encourage les autres" rather than justice being seen to be done.A thoughtful film with sincere performances.