Guilty Finger

I've mentioned on several occasions how it was not uncommon for British producers in the 1950s to bring over an American star and make a movie that, with the American star, could be more easily sold to American distributors. I've found that a lot of these movies are interesting, if somewhat flawed. An excellent example of this is Finger of Guilt.

Richard Basehart plays Reggie Wilson, who at the start of the movie is seeing a doctor because he thinks he might be losing his mind. Flash back to what happened that brought Reggie to this doctor in the first place. Reggie was a film editor in Hollywood who had to move to England after a scandal that fairly obviously should have been blacklisting, especially considering that Finger of Guilt was directed by one blacklisted American (Joseph Losey) and written by another (Howard Koch). But since this is the mid-1950s and the British producers presumably don't believe that they could openly discuss the blacklist and get an American distributor, the scandal involves romance with another man's wife.

Anyways, Reggie came to a studio in London, and under the tutelage of producer Ben Case (Roger Livesey) became an executive producer himself, while marrying Ben's daughter Lesley (Faith Brook). Ben and Reggie are locked in a struggle with each other and with the money men backing the film over whether the latest project, "Eclipse", should be filmed in one particular way or another. The movie even has an American star in the form of Kay Wallace (Constance Cummings), who had a thing for Reggie back in the day.

And then Reggie starts getting bizarre letters from some woman, Evelyn Stewart (Mary Murphy), who claims to know Reggie, and who claims to have had a torrid affair with him, one that she can prove. And it looks like she's willing to blackmail him over it. The reason I say those letters are bizarre is that Reggie has no memory of ever having seen Evelyn.

This all gets distressing enough that Reggie decides to investigate. The letters have a Newcastle postmark, so he and Lesley go up there to continue their investigation. Eventually Reggie does find Evelyn, and as a way of trying to get to the bottom of the matter, the two go to the local police station where Reggie is seriously thinking about pressing charges. Lesley, for some reason, goes somewhere else to wait for Reggie. The matter with the police is inconclusive, and when Evelyn runs into Reggie that evening, she convinces him to go to the pub with her. Why he does so makes no sense to me. Of course, Lesley sees this and it convinces her that her husband is a no-goodnik.

Unfortunately, Reggie's going into the pub is the beginning of a long denouement that just doesn't make any sense in terms of the plot or character motivations. There's the makings of a good mystery in the movie, but it feels as though Howard Koch didn't know how to resolve it and came up with a thoroughly unrealistic resolution.

All of the players do their best with the sub-par material that they're given. And it's always fun to see the inner workings of a studio put on film. But the pieces of Finger of Guilt, when put together, just don't quite add up.