Stark and wonderful film about the effects of a divorcing couple on their young teenage child (Nova Pilbeam).
The film starts with a surreal dream as the child struggles in bed to the sounds of her parents' violent argument in the next room. On the surface everything seems normal but the mother (Lydia Sherwood) is more and more absent from the house, and the father (Matheson Lang) has moved out. She spends most of her time with her governess (Jean Cadell).
The girl starts to catch on that things are not right when she catches the mother in a series of lies. She's having an affair with a ham actor (Arthur Margetson), who in an attempt to befriend the girl (he calls her his "little friend"), says she may visit him whenever she likes and they'll talk.
After catching the mother in another lie, the girl races away on her scooter and heads into the main street where sh crashes into a delivery boy (Jimmy Hanley) who becomes her closest friend.
After a series in incidents, the girl finally runs off to the actor's house where she discovers her mother in his bedroom. After a botched suicide attempt, the girl ends up in court, trying to lie to save her mother's reputation.
Pilbeam, in her first film, is around 15 (and playing younger) and she's just terrific as the betrayed child. Sherwood and Lang are good at playing the unsympathetic parents. Cadell and Margetson are solid. Jimmy Hanley almost steals the film as the cheerful delivery boy.
Co-stars include Cecil Parker, Finlay Currie, Clare Greet, and Fritz Kortner as a menacing giant in a grim children's play.
Pilbeam would of course have her biggest film successes in Hitchcock's YOUNG AND INNOCENT and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. She remains an intriguing talent of the 30s and 40s, an exceptional young actress who should have been a bigger star.
The themes and images of nightmare, horror, danger, menace, betrayal, and sorrow are beautifully handled in this very un-Hollywood-like film.
