The Halfway House **** (1944, Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns, Tom Walls, Françoise Rosay, Alfred Drayton, Guy Middleton, Sally Ann Howes, Esmond Knight) – Classic Movie Review 8163

Directors Basil Dearden and Alberto Cavalcanti’s haunting 1944 British black and white fantasy mystery drama The Halfway House stars Mervyn Johns and his real-life daughter Glynis Johns as an inn-keeper (Rhys) and his daughter (Gwyneth) who run a remote tavern in the Welsh valleys, which we soon discover was bombed the previous year, killing all the guests.

Among the travellers take shelter from a storm in the old inn and are offered the opportunity to review their existences and leave with their lives revitalised are naval couple Captain and Alice Meadows (Tom Walls and Françoise Rosay), conductor David Davies (Esmond Knight) and black marketeer Oakley (Alfred Drayton).

This appealingly odd wartime Ealing Studios occult fantasy, based on (or rather suggested by) a play The Peaceful Inn by Denis Ogden, is attractive and surprisingly optimistic for the time when it was filmed in World War Two. A zestier touch from the trusty actors and director would have made it even better, but it still a very good film.

The whole idea of having a second chance must have been very appealing and reassuring in 1944. The film also had a second chance. It got a second theatrical release in the UK in 1947.

Paris-born Rosay appears in her first British film. She and her director-husband Jacques Feyder fled from occupied France to North Africa where she worked for Radio Algiers, broadcasting propaganda from the Free French government-in-exile.

So much for the remote Welsh valleys. The halfway house was filmed at Barlynch Farm/ St Nicholas’ Priory, Barlynch, Dulverton, Somerset, England. East Anstey station, East Anstey, Devon, England, stood in for Cymbach station. The bicycle scene was shot at Porlock Hill, Porlock, Somerset, England. And the rest was filmed at Ealing Studios, Ealing, London, England.

Also in the cast are Sally Ann Howes, Guy Middleton, Richard Bird, Valerie White, Philippa Hiatt, Pat McGrath, Joss Ambler, Roland Pertwee, John Boxer, Eliot Makeham, C V France, Rachael Thomas, Jack Jones and Moses Jones.

The Halfway House is directed by Basil Dearden and Alberto Cavalcanti, runs 97 minutes, is made by Ealing Studios, is released by Associated British Film Distributors, is written by Angus MacPhail, Diana Morgan, T E B Clarke and Roland Pertwee, is shot in black and white by Wilkie Cooper, is produced by Alberto Cavalcanti, is scored by Lord Berners and is designed by Michael Relph.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8163

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