Set amidst squalid Manchester backgrounds, an elderly British woman who lives alone and gets by on scraps is robbed and left for dead; she recovers in the hospital, and is eventually reunited with the husband who ran off and left her some years prior. Director Bryan Forbes, who also adapted his screenplay from the novel by Robert Nicolson, builds this material very slowly and steadily--but with no light relief or sense of recovery from its depressing milieu, the film doesn't seem to have a course to follow (the sequences just turn into incidents). Oscar-nominated Edith Evans, a marvelous actress who can do as much for a scene with no dialogue as some actors can with a soliloquy, works her aged vulnerability to its proper advantage. However, when the character returns home from her tragedy (rendered nearly mute by her experiences), she loses all her quirky personality. Similarly, Forbes (as the director) seems not to know where he is in the final quarter, and as the writer allows his narrative to slip away in little drabs. Well-enough made, but the general air of gloom and decay robs the picture of promise. There's no moral here (perhaps on purpose), and no point, either. ** from ****