On the Night of the Fire

I am not a specialist of British films from the thirties and forties, but this one, which I discovered at the French Cinémathèque in 1988, amazed me so much. It is a drama, truly tragic thriller drama starring a terrific Ralph Richardson, grabs you, holds you from the beginning till the end. I have always thought that Ralph Richardson had the same face as Michel Serrault, the French actor, who would also had been excellent in this kind of character. The scheme looks like a James Hadley Chase's novel with a lead desperate character who looks like you and me, and who slowly but surely becomes a murderer, because of his mone issues and a blackmailer. A greedy blackmailer. The tooic where audiences can't prevent to become full of empathy for the mai character, no matter what he does to survive. Outstanding British crime flick. By the way, speaking of British masterpieces fromt he forties, what a gem THE WICKED LADY, the Leslie Arliss's film, starring Margaret Lockwood in a kind of Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN.