Dec 9, 2020
Time Without Pity (1957)
"You don't know what it's like to be alone, do you? Do you? How drunk are you? It's frightful to be alone. Ah, go to Alec, go to your son!"
"Stop shouting at me!"
"You mustn't let him face it alone. I can't stand it!"
#Time Without Pity#joseph losey#british cinema#films i done watched#Film noir#1957#Ben Barzman#Michael Redgrave#Ann Todd#Leo McKern#Paul Daneman#Peter Cushing#Alec McCowen#Renee Houston#Lois Maxwell#Richard Wordsworth#George Devine#Joan Plowright#Tristram Cary#Oof. I'm still reeling from this. I had v high expectations for this (because Losey and that cast and based on a play by Emlyn Williams)#This wasn't exactly the film I had expected‚ but it's no less excellent for that. A horribly taut race against time style thriller‚ with#The tension at near unbearable heights (and clocks and watches in almost every scene‚ just in case we forget about the deadline). Makes#Some very interesting choices in format; the opening scene is utterly brilliant‚ a triumph of disconcerting sound design‚ and all the more#Confusing for apparently revealing the identity of the killer within the first three minutes. Cue Redgrave as an alcoholic estranged father#Trying to save his son from the gallows‚ and encountering an embarrassment of Brit character actor royalty along the way (including Peter#Cushing in what was probably his final role before Hammer and horror immortality called). Redgrave is incredible; I mean he often was but#My god he gives it his all here. He really throws himself into playing this shaky‚ desperate wreck of a man. Deeply moving in places#And thunderously tense throughout. McKern is brilliant too in an ugly‚ twisty role. And Joan Plowright! Baby Joan in her first ever film.#And of course Alec McCowen. What a cast. What a film! Wish I'd found a better poster image tho#Put me in mind of John Guillermin's Town on Trial from the same year‚ tho I think this is (just) the more successful picture
