Wharf Angel

Great, atmospheric images, strong cast, literate dialogue - even if there is too much of it - and we still end up with a dreary movie.

Cameron Menzies was the movies' greatest designer but his attempts to direct all went belly up on him - outside THINGS TO COME, where Kordar had control.

This one looks for a while as if it will be the exception, with it's opening in Alison Skipworth's fog bound Barbary Coast dive, running to out of true walls and a clientèle of floozies and boozy sailors, into which radical on the run Foster bursts, with David Landau's bobbies on his trail.

There's curiosity value in seeing one of the few sympathetic depictions of a communist in a Hollywood movie and watching McLaglan doing a try out for THE INFORMER but the romance and buddy plots are drab and interest only picks up occasionally for atmospheric material like the pier at night or the shovels fight in the stoke hold, where Menzies' hand is evident.