A young woman finds herself as the intended victim of a murder plot on a transatlantic flight from London to New York.A young woman finds herself as the intended victim of a murder plot on a transatlantic flight from London to New York.A young woman finds herself as the intended victim of a murder plot on a transatlantic flight from London to New York.
Francis L. Sullivan
- Hugo Brant
- (as Francis Sullivan)
Albert Chevalier
- Counterman
- (uncredited)
Atholl Fleming
- Pilot
- (uncredited)
Alf Goddard
- Holloway Prison Warder
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- Trivia(At around 30 mins) There is a reference to pounds and guineas. It may be helpful to all that "five guineas" meant, in 1937, five pounds plus five shillings (each guinea being a pound plus one shilling). Thus, the negotiations in that scene in the film were concluded with: "Five pounds" and "five bob for the missus." (A "bob" was the nickname for a shilling) A witty comment it was, in context, notwithstanding that the concept of "the missus" is rather outdated nowadays! Pre-decimal currency remains complicated, even in the UK, in retrospect.
- Quotes
Jennie Carr: As a matter of fact I could eat a horse!
Billy Cooper: By the look of this place you probably will!
- SoundtracksAtlantic Love Call
Performed by Desmond Tester
Featured review
Robert Stevenson (1905-1986) was a superb British director, but his name is not widely enough recognised. He is probably most famous for JANE EYRE (1944) with Orson Welles and TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS (1940). Less well known are his excellent DISHONORED LADY (1947, see my review), and his truly magnificent OWD BOB (1938, see my review), which he made the year after this. In this year, he also made KING SOLOMON'S MINES with Anna Lee, who stars once again in this film of his. This really is a most fascinating film, because of the spectacular second half which takes place on a trans-Atlantic Clipper seaplane, the interior of which resembles that of a zeppelin, on multiple levels with individual sleeping compartments, bar and restaurant. It even has a little balcony where people stand outside to take the air and look down upon the ships which are not far below them. Francis L. Sullivan here gives one of his finest performances as the oiliest and least scrupulous of villains, truly hair-raising in his wickedness. Anna Lee is a typical 1930s English 'sweetie', but with more fibre and character than is usual for that time, and she handles the part of the courageous accidental heroine very well. She is determined to save the wrong man from being executed in America for a crime he did not commit. Anna stows away on the Clipper to get back to America to give her evidence, which Scotland Yard had refused to take seriously. This is very much a Hitchcock-style suspense thriller, and makes excellent viewing. It deserves to be more widely known, as it is certainly a British pre-War classic. If Britain had as many film buffs as there are in America, where almost any trivial B or C movie can achieve fame nowadays, films like this would be familiar and praised, rather than obscure and forgotten. But the British are lazy about their cinematic heritage, and films like this are never shown on British television, so no one even knows they exist. In this film, the child actor Desmond Tester is most amusing as an eccentric child musical prodigy who becomes entangled in the murderous intrigues going on aboard the Clipper plane. If only British films still produced wonderfully strange character actors like that! It was also amusing to see a young Peter Bull scowling with his heavy jowls as a blackmailer in this film. In real life, he was actually rather jolly, although extraordinarily bombastic and often too loud, and he was always available for a chat when he ran his astrological shop in Notting Hill Gate in the 1960s and 1970s.
- robert-temple-1
- Mar 13, 2010
- Permalink
Details
- Runtime1 hour 9 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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