"Dead of Night" had excellent cast but where everybody else appeared more or less ordinary, there was one lady who was actually standing out as attractive and stylish - she appeared in a story about cursed mirror and her name was Googie Withers. Apparently big star in post-WW2 years and unfortunately so far completely unknown to me - in fact, I must say that just right now I realise how much were we conditioned to follow industry of Hollywood, where Europe (in this case UK) had its own production with interesting names, great ideas and original artists. Her biggest moment came with the movie "It Always Rains on Sunday" so last night I dived into it with greatest pleasure.
To my biggest surprise, it was real British film noir - it used the same ingredients as US cousin (underworld, criminals, detectives, people talking in slang, etc) but this was happening in London's East End, in fact this was Bethnal Green where my good friend used to live, so I recognised the area. When I was around it was drab and grey part of town, where poor people lived and apparently in 1948. things were exactly the same - director Robert Hamer (who accidentally made the cursed mirror story) made a point by describing life in a post-war London, where people hardly survive in their shaky, overcrowded houses and apparently everybody lives in poverty. This time Googie Withers is neither beautiful nor elegant, but rather a neglected, unhappy and nagging housewife married to a middle aged man who also have two teenage daughters in a tow. We find out in a flashback that she used to work for her husband as a barmaid and years ago she was in a love with a handsome criminal (John McCallum, her real life husband) who got arrested so her marriage was basically a defeat out of necessity. It turns out that the guy escapes the prison and is hiding in her garden shed, so now she is trying to protect him from police and detectives who are searching all over the town for him.
There are many quite fascinating things about this movie, in fact I might watch it again just to appreciate it more: naturally the focus is on stoic and strong Googie Withers who is all fire under the ice, but I must say that all the other characters are equally great. Its interesting to note that its not only criminal who tries to break and escape, almost every character in this movie is desperately wiggling and trying to find some way out of this horrible greyness - both teenage daughters are trying to escape joyless home trough love affairs with their boyfriends, there is a womanising married man, a detective, a naive boyfriend, each one of them having his own subplot and idea of escape. And they all live in a impoverished, crowded place where privacy and freedom are genuinely unknown. Everybody lives on top of each other and they have to move out of the way in order for someone to have a bath or a dinner. Naturally its impossible to hide the escaped criminal in such circumstances. This is now second movie in a row that I am watching Withers and she seems to be real interesting screen personality, definitely not a weepy doormat, she has a great charisma and is constantly overpowering her male partners. I am so impressed with all of this that I might go a little deeper into classic British cinema. As much as I love Powell and Pressburger work, obviously there is much more to explore.
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