The Mark of Cain * (1947, Sally Gray, Eric Portman, Patrick Holt, Dermot Walsh) – Classic Movie Review 13,372

The gloomy 1947 British historical crime melodrama film The Mark of Cain is based on Joseph Shearing’s novel Airing in a Closed Carriage, and stars Sally Gray, Eric Portman, Patrick Holt, and Dermot Walsh. 

Director Brian Desmond Hurst’s gloomy 1947 British historical crime melodrama film The Mark of Cain is based on Joseph Shearing’s novel Airing in a Closed Carriage, and stars Sally Gray, Eric Portman, Patrick Holt, and Dermot Walsh.

A lifeless, unconvincing slice of costume melodrama starts as English businessman Richard Howard (Eric Portman) visits Bordeaux in France to buy cotton for his mills from attractive young French woman Sarah Bonheur (Sally Gray), falls for her and woos her. But his younger brother John (Patrick Holt) arrives to close the deal, and quickly courts and marries her.

[Spoiler alert] Back home in their grand house in Manchester, England, John is nasty to an unhappy Sarah. Richard turns up to rescue her and tries to get her to divorce John and go off with him. But Sarah reconciles with her husband, and a vengeful Richard poisons John and tries to frame Sarah for the murder. Luckily, Sarah has another suitor: Jerome Thorn (Dermot Walsh).

Basically Sarah has married the wrong brother, but then neither the effete, anxious and over-wrought Richard not the more macho John are the right man for her, so it really is lucky that there is a third man, and so much more reasonable! This is in effect a Gainsborough melodrama but made by Two Cities films, and without the same style and conviction.

With the exception of Eric Portman, the acting is rough and ordinary, the mostly unconvincing script has few brio moments or big surprises, and Hurst’s direction lacks enough style and tension. Alex Vetchinsky’s production designs and Erwin Hillier’s black and white cinematography are redeeming features. And it does move quite swiftly, with a lot of plot and characters to explore in just 88 minutes. Also it has camp and curiosity value.

The screenplay is by Christianna Brand and Francis Crowdy (adaptation by W P Lipscomb), based on the 1943 novel Airing in a Closed Carriage by Marjorie Bowen under the pseudonym of Joseph Shearing, inspired by the murder trial of Florence Maybrick.

It was made at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire on sets designed by Alex Vetchinsky.

British author Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long (born Campbell; 1 November 1885 – 23 December 1952) used many pseudonyms: Marjorie Bowen, Joseph Shearing, George R Preedy, Robert Paye, John Winch, Margaret Campbell, and Mrs Vere Campbell.

Two Cities films was founded by Italian film producers Filippo Del Giudice, and Mario Zampi, though by the mid-1940s it had been swallowed up by the Rank Organisation. From 1943 to 1946, Gainsborough Pictures produced a series of studio-bound costume melodramas for the UK, known as the Gainsborough melodramas. They were mostly based on recent popular books by female novelists, and had Margaret Lockwood, Jean Kent and Patricia Roc to decorate them.

By the late 1940s, the Rank Organisation had gained an interest in Gainsborough too. Two Cities Films and Gainsborough Pictures are both now owned by British playwright and author Gregory Motton.

The cast

The cast are Sally Gray, Eric Portman, Patrick Holt, Dermot Walsh, Denis O’Dea, Edward Lexy, Miles Malleson, Theresa Giehse, Maureen Delaney [Maureen Delany], Helen Cherry, Vida Hope, Dora Sevening, Janet Kay, James Hayter, Andrew Cruickshank, Marjorie Gresley, Beryl Measor, May MacDonald, Susan English, Johnny Schofield, Helen Goss, John Warren, Rose Howlett, William Mervyn, Noel Howlett, Arthur Howard, Hope Matthews, Olwen Brookes, Sidney Bromley, Fred Johnson, Albert Ferber, John Hollingsworth, George Opoka, Jacqueline Robert, Tony Etienne, Willoughby Gray, Aidan Wallet, James Carson, Mary Daniels, Jean Bowler, Wensley Pithey, Michael Logan, Norah Gordon, Christiana Forbes, and Colleen Nolan.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,372

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