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gervase_fenEven at 69 minutes, this was a chore to sit through, with just a few bright spots. Val Gielgud is probably the pick of the actors, performing in his own screenplay, based on his own novel, in a role as a BBC radio producer not a million miles away from his day job. There are some striking compositions of radio actors partially obscured by the giant circular microphones – the Director of Photography was Gunther Krampf, who had been behind the camera for the iconic Louise Brooks’ film Pandora’s Box. As the murder mystery plays out the movie cuts away every so often to depict a typical evening’s output from Broadcasting House – it’s these scenes which Krampf goes to town on, capturing the frenzied interplay of silhouettes of tap dancers and musicians on the studio walls.
Time has not been kind to the comic relief, Peter Haddon as a louche half-cut silly ass toff, sent up and down the stairwells of Broadcasting House in search of the Variety Theatre and its tapdancing lovelies. Jack Hawkins glowers in an underwritten role as “Programme Research”. Ian Hunter has a brisk authority about him as Gregory, the investigating detective, and towards the end the crime story looks as if it will be resolved by the application of cutting edge – indeed, possibly bleeding edge – technology, the Blattnerphone (which sadly we don’t see in all of its steel tape whirligig glory.) This is just a diversion though ; Gregory has already worked out that the most technically sound alibi is also, inevitably, the one constructed to be so by the criminal.
Next episode : So Long at the Fair
Time has not been kind to the comic relief, Peter Haddon as a louche half-cut silly ass toff, sent up and down the stairwells of Broadcasting House in search of the Variety Theatre and its tapdancing lovelies. Jack Hawkins glowers in an underwritten role as “Programme Research”. Ian Hunter has a brisk authority about him as Gregory, the investigating detective, and towards the end the crime story looks as if it will be resolved by the application of cutting edge – indeed, possibly bleeding edge – technology, the Blattnerphone (which sadly we don’t see in all of its steel tape whirligig glory.) This is just a diversion though ; Gregory has already worked out that the most technically sound alibi is also, inevitably, the one constructed to be so by the criminal.
Next episode : So Long at the Fair
