A wonderful adaptation of an already very good play that, in my mind, improves upon the original source material. As a morality tale it's fairly thought provoking - though it's slightly irritating that the female character has to spell things out for the audience every few minutes - but it probably works even better as a simple character drama.
A good cast is headed by the always fantastic Alastair Sim as Inspector Poole (the name changed from the original text - in my opinion for the better, controversially), who, though on screen less often than you might think, is like a burning sun around which orbits everything else in the film. The cool, calm yet still devastating Inspector is a part Sim was born to play and I can't imagine another actor bettering it. The Inspector as presented here is more benign than that of the original play, which could have risked making the Inspector seem less interested in the other characters and too detached from them - the Inspector of the film never raises his voice, and some of his more forceful lines are given to the young female role - but Sim is able to maintain a chillingly capable and oppressive demeanour simply by smiling. He almost floats through the proceedings. A truly magnetic performance.
The direction is also to be commended - there are several edits between shots designed to make you jump, and they definitely do the job - and enlivens the material when the film could have been a bit of a slog (though the script is great it's obviously far more difficult to maintain an electrifying atmosphere through film than through the more immediate medium of the theatrical stage). There's little I can say about "An Inspector Calls"; I'd just highly recommend it. Give it a go.
A good cast is headed by the always fantastic Alastair Sim as Inspector Poole (the name changed from the original text - in my opinion for the better, controversially), who, though on screen less often than you might think, is like a burning sun around which orbits everything else in the film. The cool, calm yet still devastating Inspector is a part Sim was born to play and I can't imagine another actor bettering it. The Inspector as presented here is more benign than that of the original play, which could have risked making the Inspector seem less interested in the other characters and too detached from them - the Inspector of the film never raises his voice, and some of his more forceful lines are given to the young female role - but Sim is able to maintain a chillingly capable and oppressive demeanour simply by smiling. He almost floats through the proceedings. A truly magnetic performance.
The direction is also to be commended - there are several edits between shots designed to make you jump, and they definitely do the job - and enlivens the material when the film could have been a bit of a slog (though the script is great it's obviously far more difficult to maintain an electrifying atmosphere through film than through the more immediate medium of the theatrical stage). There's little I can say about "An Inspector Calls"; I'd just highly recommend it. Give it a go.