El extraño caso del Dr. Manning

Greta Gynt was always a striking appearance in the films in which she acted, and she is the ornament of this film, as beautiful as ever, while her role is limited to the very worrying rich wife of the doctor who gets kidnapped for no obvious reason. Although a great actress, she never reached prominence as a star, although she always acted well. The sordid business here, the bleak reality of a mean kidnapping drama staged by an ordinary man ruined in his mind by the bitterness after the loss of his wife, a black and white drama of how Greta's efforts to save and regain her husband get drowned by too many people engaging in the business, and one even getting murdered for it, was enough for her, and she didn't make any more films, while at the same time she had made a career in films prominent enough by her beauty. The director here was Arthur Crabtree who directed many of the great British films of the 40s and also was an excellent cinematographer - this was also his last film. So this criminal drama is a kind of a curiosity, an almost documentary investigation of how a kidnapping drama must not be handled, as the more cooks who boil the soup, with worse the soup will get. It's not a bad film but only slightly above average, almost touching on B level.