This is an excellent drama, with a complex story and a good script, well directed by Lawrence Huntington. It stars Derek Farr as a deserter from the Army who is hoping not to be discovered, and works as a publican under the false name of Peter Brown (his real name being Peter Burden). His pub is in a fishing village on the Cornish coast. But by bizarre coincidence, a former corporal from his regiment turns up for a beer, played by Kenneth More. He is hard up and lets Farr know that he won't report him if he gives him some money and pays him monthly after that. Farr cannot afford it, so he flees to London. As he cannot pay the rent on his attic flat in London, he takes the only thing of value which he has with him to sell, namely a .32 Enfield service revolver. Just as he is holding it to show to the shop owner, two masked men burst in and rob the shop, knocking out the proprietor. A policeman chases them and they shoot him dead. Farr is then caught up in the crime, since the proprietor assumes he was a third gunman of the robbery. But this is only the beginning of the complications. The police are on the case, with Edward Chapman, with his authoritative air, playing a Chief Inspector, and the young Lawrence Harvey as his detective sergeant. This was only Harvey's second film, but he already seems assured and does an excellent job. As the tense story progresses, Farr finds himself being chased by a policeman in Soho and dashes into an open door which is just closing. He shuts the door and puts his band over the mouth of a young woman so she won't scream, apologizing all the while for his rudeness. This is Joan Hopkins, an excellent actress who retired from the screen in the fifties after only a handful of films. She is just right for the part and has a strong screen presence. One thing leads to another and another and another and another. The story turns endless corners, and there is always a new threat. Farr and Hopkins find they cannot part yet because of the area being under observation, and her flat has already been searched once. Hopkins is a widow, her husband having been killed as an airman in the War. She comes to realize that Farr is not a baddie, and they slowly come closer and closer together in the typically restrained way of English people at that time (just recall Celia Johnson). But trouble keeps happening. Farr remembers that one of the real robbers had the tops of his two middle fingers missing. That is their only clue as to what really happened. It seems hopeless. Britain is full of wartime deserters, in fact 20,000 of them. Farr himself had a sad story to excuse his desertion. He and Hopkins flee to another distant coastal town, but they have to flee from there. Harried and hunted, and now bonded together, they struggle to evade the police. But the story goes on getting more complicated still. The reviewer's Code of Honour forbids me to tell more about the twists and turns that ensue. And certainly, the ending cannot even be hinted at. (Nor, frankly, can the resolution even be guessed.) The film is really directed superbly by Huntington, who three years earlier had directed NIGHT BOAT TO DUBLIN (1946, see my review). There were so many British movies of this period which are worthwhile, and one must hope that somehow people will continue to watch them.
Review of Man on the Run
