Green for Danger ***** (1946, Alastair Sim, Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Megs Jenkins, Leo Genn, Rosamund John) – Classic Movie Review 6960

‘Follow this man in the FOOTSTEPS of MURDER!’

Co-writer/ director Sidney Gilliat’s 1946 British black comedy Green for Danger stars Alastair Sim at the zenith of his comic genius as the eccentric Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police, investigating baffling murders in a World War Two emergency hospital, when German flying bombs are raining down on London in the middle of the Blitz.

It is August 1944, and the local postman Joseph Higgins (Moore Marriott), delirious but trying to deliver an urgent message, is brought in to the small cottage hospital and put on the operating table – and that is when the murders begin.

Sidney Gilliat and Claud Gurney’s brilliant comedy script, based on the 1944 detective novel by Christianna Brand, gives the green light to the mystery and the laughs, conjuring up sharp dialogue, an eerie mood and a ripe selection of suspects.

Hooray for Alastair Sim! And there is a career best turn for character actress Megs Jenkins as Nurse Woods, the kind of role she had already played in The Lamp Still Burns.

Alfred Hitchcock said that Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, who wrote the first script of his film The Lady Vanishes (1938), were ‘a very good team’. He asked François Truffaut: ‘Have you seen any of their pictures?’ Truffaut opined: ‘There was one, Green for Danger, that didn’t quite come off.’

Also in the cast are Trevor Howard as the anaesthetist Dr Barney Barnes, Sally Gray as Nurse Frederica ‘Freddi’ Linley, Leo Genn as Mr Eden, Rosamund John as Nurse Esther Sanson, Judy Campbell as Sister Marion Bates, Ronald Adam, Ronald Ward, Moore Marriott as Joseph Higgins (the unfortunate postman), Henry Edwards as Mr. Purdy, Ronald Adam as Dr White, George Woodbridge as Detective Sergeant Hendricks, Wendy Thompson as Sister Carter, John Rae as the porter and Frank Ling as the rescue worker.

The film is shot at Pinewood Studios in England in black and white, though the title refers to the colour coding used on anaesthetists’ gas canisters. It was the first movie made at Pinewood.

Green for Danger is directed by Sidney Gilliat, runs 91 minutes, is written by Sidney Gilliat and Claud Gurney, based on the novel by Christianna Brand, is shot in black and white by Wilkie Cooper, is produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, is scored by William Alwyn, and is designed by Peter Proud and W E Hutchinson.

Dr Barnes: ‘I gave nitrous oxide at first, to get him under.’

Inspector Cockrill: ‘Oh yes, stuff the dentist gives you, hmmm – commonly known as laughing gas.’

Barnes: ‘Used to be – actually the impurities cause the laughs.’

Cockrill: ‘Oh, just the same as in our music halls.’

Christianna Brand was married to a surgeon assigned to a military hospital and watched an operation. The anaesthetist told her how to commit a murder and she turning the idea into a thriller novel, getting her murder motive when a drunk man told her of an experience in a bomb shelter.

Gilliat bought a copy of the novel at London’s Victoria Station to read on the train. He said: ‘What appealed to me was the anaesthetics – the rhythmic ritual, from wheeling the patient out, to putting him out, and keeping him out (in this case, permanently), with all those crosscutting opportunities offered by flowmeters, hissing gas, cylinders, palpitating rubber bags, and all the other trappings, in the middle of the Blitz, too.’

Alastair Sim as Scrooge (1951).

Other Alastair Sim classics include An Inspector Calls, The Green Man, The Happiest Days of Your Life, The Belles of St Trinian’s, Laughter in Paradise, Inspector Hornleigh, Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday, Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It, Scrooge and Cottage To Let.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6960

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Green for Danger film poster.