Portrait in Black

A genre that's often fun even if the movies aren't necessarily very good is the potboiler of the 1950s and 1960s. Recently, I had the opportunity to see another of those movies: Portrait in Black.

Lana Turner is the star here, and she plays Sheila Cabot, the second wife of shipping magnate Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan). Matthew is an extremely tough businessman, and that toughness is driving him to an early grave as he seems to need a series of injections from his doctor, Dr. David Rivera (Anthony Quinn). However, Matthew is tough in his personal life as well as his business life; as one example he seems quite ticked that Sheila has decided to get a learner's permit to be able to drive for herself. This, after, would mean she'd no longer be forced to use the chauffeur Cobb (Ray Walston) to go anywhere.

And goodness knows she's got places to go. She's secretly carrying on an affair with Dr. Rivera! Both of them have had the thought that they could hasten Matthew's death through an air-bubble induced embolism, although that would of course be unethical malpractice, and there's a reasonable chance somebody might figure things out since there are signs that Sheila is less than fully honest about where she's taking the car. Cathy (Sandra Dee), Matthew's adult daughter from his first marriage, notices that Sheila often goes "shopping" but comes home having bought nothing.

Of course, Cathy's relationship with her dad isn't much better. Cathy's boyfriend is Blake Richards (John Saxon), who runs one of the tugboat concessions in the San Francisco harbor. But, thanks in part to Dad, as well as Dad's second-in-commmand Howard Mason (Richard Basehart), Blake's dad was driven out of business, giving Blake good reason to hate Mr. Cabot. Worse, Mr. Cabot and Mason screw Blake over in awarding the new contract to deal with the Cabot Line.

And then Matthew dies suddenly, although it's not because of any untoward doings on anybody's part. However, a few days letter Sheila receives an hand-printed letter with no return address but a postmark from Carmel congratulating her on doing away with her husband! Sheila and David are convinced that somebody knows about their affair and is going to try to blackmail them. Suspicion eventually falls on Howard Mason's shoulders, and Dr. Rivera comes up with a ridiculous plan to bump off Howard in a shooting that could easily be blamed on a disgruntled longshoreman since there a labor dispute brewing. Except that the killing doesn't quite go to plan. Oh, Howard gets killed all right, but it takes two attempts and then Cathy starts trying to put two and two together....

Portrait in Black got scathing reviews at the time of its release in 1960, and it's not hard to see why. However, 65-plus years on, it's easier to sit back and have fun at how delightfully overwrought and bad this one is. It goes from one ridiculously over-the-top scene to the next, leading up the a climax where you know Anthony Quinn's character is going to get it if only because the Production Code was still in effect and demanded it. But the movie generally swims in a sea of hatred that's brewing just under the surface, with all the characters delivering bad dialogue.

Portrait in Black is definitely recommended, but not for the reasons the filmmakers at the time would have wanted you to see it.

Mike's Murder

I've mentioned on several occasions how there are quite a few 1980s movies that I had heard about growing up, but didn't get the chance to see when they came out because of my being too young. And then there are movies I never even heard about because they didn't get much of a release. A good example from that latter category is Mike's Murder. Since the synopsis sounded interesting, I recorded it when it showed up on TCM and once again eventually got around to watching it and doing this post on the movie.

Debra Winger is the star here, although she clearly doesn't play Mike. Instead, she's Betty Parrish, a bank teller in Los Angeles who likes to play tennis, taking lessons from Mike (Mark Keyloun). They're also flirtatious, with some embraces that lead to the two of them going up to Betty's apartment and making sweet, sweet love.

On another night some time later, Mike meets up at a lower-class hash joint with his friend Pete (Darrell Larson). This scene is filmed in a way that gives one the distinct impression that something untoward is going on. That impression turns out to be right, as when Mike and Pete leave the place, they're intercepted by a couple of guys who are clearly higher up in the world of 1980s drug distributon, and that Mike and Pete shouldn't be trying to horn in on other people's territory. Worse, they say they know where Mike lives, forcing him to seek refuge with Sam (Robert Crosson), a photographer he knows.

Not long after that, Betty is driving along when whom should she meet but Mike! He wants to get in the car and have Betty drive him somewhere. It's clear again from his demeanor that something's wrong. We the viewers already know this, but Betty picks up on it too, with Mike finally explaining what's going on before having Betty drop him off at the driveway of one of those Sunset Blvd. style mansions. Not that Mike is moving in with Norma Desmond or getting the swimming pool he always wanted, the dope.

Mike and Betty play phone tag while Mike lays low. When he finally thinks the heat is off, he and Pete start getting involved with drug deals again. But Pete is stupid enough to try to skim some of other people's drugs off the top, and surely the bigwigs are going to discover this. They do, and kill Mike for the trouble. Of course, with a title like Mike's Murder, you knew this was going to happen.

Betty gets the phone call that Mike was killed, and she's distraught. She starts poking around herself, even showing up when the crime scene technicians are going through the murder, with blood still on the walls and all that. (This seems like a plot hole, since you'd think there would be police tape and that Betty wouldn't have learned of the murder until after the detectives got done with the crime scene.) Betty goes to the house where she dropped Mike off, finding out that it's owned by a gay sugar daddy Philip (Paul Winfield) who let Mike stay there basically in exchange for favors, although Mike was only at most gay for pay. She also begins to learn what a nasty character Pete is, although it's not as though he's got any of the power in the drug world.

Having seen Mike's Murder, I can see why it's one of those movies that I'd never heard of. Apparently it was butchered by the studio before release, changing the story structure significantly. That having been said, it's really not that bad of a movie despite some of the plot holes. It's slow going for the first two thirds of the movie, but the finale is pretty darn suspenseful. If you're willing to put up with that sort of structure, Mike's Murder is definitely worth a watch.

The Hanging Tree

I didn't expect to do reviews of a couple of movies directed by Delmer Daves in rapid succession, but I'm far enough ahead in my scheduling of reviews that I don't get to see everything that's coming up and is on my DVR until after I've already scheduled other stuff. That, and I don't quite pay as close attention to who directs the movies that I post about, more the genres and stars. With that in mind, the Delmer Daves movie in question is The Hanging Tree, which is getting that TCM airing tomorrow, April 18, at 6:00 PM.

It's the Montana Territory in 1873, and coming into town, or not so much a town as the few buildings that serve a mining camp in gold rush country, is doctor Joseph Frail (Gary Cooper). He comes across a small cabin on a hill overlooking the buidlings and the river that the prospectors are panning, and makes a deal with the man who lives there to buy the place since it's for sale. Meanwhile, down at the river, a young man named Rune (Ben Piazza) tries to pilfer some of the gold dust from the sluice-box. He's spotted by Frenchy (Karl Malden), who tries to shoot at Rune and gets a posse of miners to go after Rune, although nobody gets a clear enough view of Rune's face to be able to identify him.

Rune, for his part gets away, but only as far as Dr. Frail's cabin. Frail extracts the bullet, which he knows is incriminating evidence although he throws it away without telling Rune. Rune can't pay for the medical services, so Frail blackmails Rune and make him serve as Frail's manservant. Unsurprisingly, Rune chafes at this, but it's basically this or the titular hanging tree since gold pilfering is seen as a capital offense around here. Frail and Rune go into town, where a bit of Frail's back-story is learned in a poker game where he wins a gold claim. Apparently, his wife and brother back east had an affair and killed themselves, so Frail burned down the house and headed west. But it shows his violent nature and gives him a reason to be a bit secretive.

Meanwhile, there's a stagecoach coming, except that it's intercepted, robbed, and the horses set free so that the coach goes careening off by itself and down a steep embankment, leaving only one possibled survivor. That survivor, the Swiss immigrant Elizabeth (Maria Schell), is found barely alive, and is taken eventually to Frail's cabin to recover. She's got serious burns and is temporarily blinded from exposure and the burns, although she does regain her vision. Elizabeth loves Frail although he doesn't reciprocate, while Frenchy has already made advances toward Elizabeth that pissed Frail off.

Frenchy and Elizabeth both want to make their own way in the world, and the best way to do so is to buy into that gold claim that Frail won in the poker game, bringing Rune along because they need more than one man to work it. They do eventually find gold, and this leeds to a drunken celebration that sets up the final conflict of the movie which also involves "Doctor" Grubb (George C. Scott). Grubb claims to be a doctor, but he's one of those phony preachers who uses the power of the Bible to treat people and tell their fortunes. He didn't like a real doctor showing up, and this is his chance to get rid of Frail once and for all.

The Hanging Tree is another of those competently made westerns that tells a reasonably good story and tells it well, although it doesn't feel like it's breaking any new ground. It's helped by a higher budget that enabled having a bunch of good actors, and a lot of location shooting. There's nothing terribly new here, but there definitely is a good deal of entertainment to be had.

Better than only being inhuman

There was a movie I saw many years ago that involved a particular plot point and, if memory served, starred Jane Wyatt. Not too long ago, the movie We're Only Human showed up on TCM, and the plot synopsis and presence of Jane Wyatt made it sound familiar. Sure enough, I had seen it an age ago and never blogged about it. So now that I've watched it again and it's fresh in my mind, I can give you a post on it.

Jane Wyatt plays lady reporter Sally Rogers, who would not go on to work on the Alan Brady Show, but that's another story. Rogers shows up outside a joint where policeman Pete McCaffrey (Preston Foster) is casing the joint across the street. A hearse shows up and carries up a wicker body bag, but McCaffrey knows this is a ruse, so when they come back out, he confronts them, finding out that Lefty Berger is in the not-a-coffin. Burger is a wanted gangster, so McCaffrey thinks he's done a great job. Sally is naïve, so she thinks Pete has done a great job, too, writing a glowing story about what she saw and even falling in love with Pete.

However, Pete's boss is ticked off, because the rest of the gang is going to be spooked, and the police department was doing a bigger investigation that was hopefully going to bring down the whole gang. Worse, Pete is the sort of police detective who insists on doing things his own way, because he just knows the rules as they currently stand aren't always right and need to be broken. Worse for him, however, is when he is given the assignment to take Lefty up to prison on the train, Lefty escapes! That, and Lefty starts taunting McCaffrey about his inability to bring Lefty back to justice.

Things get even worse for McCaffrey when his regular detective partner and housemate, Det. Walsh (James Gleason), radios for backup outside a bank. A subplot involves the fact that McCaffrey lives with Walsh and his wife (Jane Darwell), and Mrs. Walsh keeps trying to see that McCaffrey gets a suitable wife. Anyhow, when McCaffrey winds up at the bank, he and Walsh go in to try to catch the gangsters who go in, only for Walsh to be fatally shot. It's getting harder and harder to find Lefty.

Meanwhile, there's a lawyer inside Lefty's organization, Martin (Arthur Hohl), who is terribly displeased with the fact that Lefty has been escaped, the reasoning being that Lefty has to know somebody tipped off the police to the fact he was going to be in that coffin escorted out by the fake funeral workers. Martin not illogically expects that Berger will conclude it was he who fed information to the cops, and will want revenge. Sure enough, Martin gets shot in a drive-by shooting. But then, and this is the plot point I remember because of how unbelievably stupid it was, Sally is with McCaffrey at the shooting and, in getting the story, prints the address of a couple of eyewitnesses along with their picture.

So, of course, the eyewitnesses get harassed by Berger's men, and McCaffrey seems to be back to square one with Berger arrogantly taunting him. But, since this is a Code-era movie, you know that Berger is going to be caught, and that the cop and reporter are going to live happily ever after, more or less.

The big problem with We're Only Human is that the plot has the main characters be inordinately stupid, climaxing in that scene where Sally interviews the eyewitnesses. Indeed, none of this bears much resemblance to reality. To be fair, however, the movie was only intended to be a B movie, and another of those films where probably nobody expected viewers 90 years later to be watching and giving their critique. So sit back and watch just to see where all the faults are. And thankfully, it'll all be over fairly quickly.

Lovely views of Italy

A movie that I'd seen show up on TCM several times in the past but had never watched was The Battle of the Villa Fiorita. So as with a bunch of other movies, the last time it showed up on TCM, I decided I'd record it in order to be able to watch it and finally get it off my list of movies I hadn't seen before.

Maureen O'Hara stars as Moira, an upper-class British woman married to Darrell (Richard Todd) and with two youngish children Debbie and Michael who can afford to go to boarding school and even have a horse! But life for Moira is boring since Darrell isn't the most exciting person. So when the two go to a concert and Moira is introduced to to pianist Lorenzo (Rossanno Brazzi), she immediately falls for him and the two start an affair that results in Darrell basically kicking Moira out of the house and sending her to live with Lorenzo at his palatial estate near Lake Garda in northern Italy.

The two kids get back from school and find out that Mom has left them, and they're not very happy about it. So, like any good kids, the decide that they'd like to see Mom and convince her to come back home. Of course, there's the difficulty of just getting there, since this is the mid-1960s and they're young enough that independent international travel is a big deal, never mind the expense that results in them selling Debbie's horse which becomes a plot point later in the story.

But, the two kids are able to run away from home and somehow Dad never really seems to worry where they are since the trip is an overnight one. But in any case, the two kids are able to find the Villa Fiorita and see their mother again. Mom and her paramour put the kids up since it's not as if they can do anything else, at least not until they can contact Darrell who might be able to come and get the kids. In the meantime, the two British kids get to meet Lorenzo's daughter Donna (a young Olivia Hussey), and the kids all become friends of a sort.

Meanwhile, the kids have a plan to bring Debbie and Michael's parents back together, which basically involves going on a hunger strike, or at least not eating this newfangled Italian food that's totally alien to the two British kids. Debbie is too young to realize that this isn't a complete hunger strike in that the kids are supposed to be sneaking food in from elsewhere, and rather stupidly gets pissed when she catches Michael and Donna eating. Oh, and kissing, too. Debbie does get a local priest involved in things, though, even though the family is Protestant (a bit humorous, I found, considering Maureen O'Hara was fairly prominently Irish).

Things continue to escalate until Michael and Donna decide to run off and get in a small sailboat on Lake Garda just as a storm is about to come up. Michael may have learned the basics of sailing, but he's not that good a sailor.

For some reason, I went into The Battle of the Villa Fiorita expecting something like one of those light comedies of the 1930s where the kids of a widow(er) or divorced parent find another person who would make just the right partner for their parent, and work to bring the two leads together in the final reel. The only difference being that in this case the two right partners are supposed to be the original mother and father. However, The Battle of the Villa Fiorita is a straight-up drama, with some melodramatic elements in it. That drama doesn't really work for me, and the kids aren't all that appealing. Italy is lovely, however, even though the print TCM ran doesn't do it justice.

But maybe The Battle of the Villa Fiorita will work better for some of you than it did for me.

King and Country

Another of the people who was honored in the 2025 edition of Summer Under the Stars is British actor Tom Courtenay. A couple of British movies that I hadn't seen before got airings, giving me a good chance to record some new-to-me stuff. One of those movies is King and Country.

The movie opens with Courtenay, as Pvt. Arthur Hamp, lying on a bed playing his harmonica, with a man just outside the room. The scene switches to reveal all of this is taking place in one of the World War I trenches, which are a profoundly brutal and uncomfortable place to be stuck: there's no place for the water to drain, and there are rats and lice everywhere. Then we see a Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogarde) talking to another officer about Hamp. Apparently he's on trial for his life, and at the court-martial it's going to be Hargreaves defending him.

Hargreaves is in these trenches in order to meet Hamp and talk to him, in the hopes of getting evidence to mitigate the sentence if it's not possible to get Hamp declared not guilty. This is also an excellent chance to provide some exposition and the back story to Hamp's character. Before enlisting for the war, he didn't have much of a home life, either growing up, or then once he got married. His wife having left him, that might be part of the reason Hamp enlisted. But all of the men Hamp first met at the same time he enlisted and whom fhe first served with are all long since killed in action in the war.

So maybe that's why Hamp just got up one day and started walking, possibly with the hope of getting back to London to see his mother. But it's also fairly obvious to anybody higher up that you can't just having the enlisted men doing this willy-nilly of their own volition. That's no way to run an army, especially not during a time of war. The higher brass understandably see this as desertion, and the penalty for desertion has to be death in order to discourage everybody else from trying to pursue the same course Hamp is stands accused of having done.

Hargreaves is defending Hamp, but a lot of the other enlisted men rather cynically believe that the point of a man like Hargreaves is less to give Hamp the best defense possible, but more to make everything look like it's all been done legitimately and on the up-and-up, even though in their minds the verdict and sentence have already been decided.

Eventually the court-martial itself begins, and it's clear that Hargreaves is going to go for a defense of shell shock. But the doctor, Capt. O'Sullivan (Leo McKern), does his best to dispute that, while there's a question of whether Pvt. Hamp even cares any more whether he lives or dies. The trial leads to the inevitable verdict....

King and Country is based on a novel turned into a stage play and looks a lot like it's based on a play. To be fair, however, it's not like the material needs to be opened up beyond the confines of a stage play. One thing director Joseph Losey does, however, is to use scene transitions that are photographs of the actual carnage from the Great War. This is very effective. But what is even more effective is the outstanding acting performances. This is some of Courtenay's best work, up there with The Dresser.

I'm glad I saw this one, even as brutal as it is. If you get the chance to see it, make it a point to do so.

The Straight Story

Director David Lynch died last year, and TCM eventually got around to doing a tribute him with a handful of his films. One that I hadn't seen before was The Straight Story, so I recorded it with a view to watching it eventually. Having finally seen it, I can now do the review for you and put it up here.

The Straight Story is based on a real story, although I'm not quite certain how much the real story was changed for the movie. If you're old enough you might remember the real story making the news, since it's one of those human interest stories that would have been ripe for turning into a movie. In Laurens, Iowa, a town in the northwest part of the state, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) lives with his adult daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), who seems to have some sort of intellectual disability: she talks a bit strangely, and mentions later in the movie that she lost custody of her children because she was declared unfit. Alvin is getting up in years and has diabetes and poor eyesight, to the point that his doctor wants him to change his lifestyle or else he'll have to use a walker after he falls and can't get up.

One day, the phone rings. Apparently, Alvin has a brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton, who only gets one scene at the end of the movie), who lives several hundred miles away in the town of Mount Zion, Wisconsin. Alvin and Lyle haven't spoken to each other in years, for reasons that aren't quite fully explained. But with Lyle possibly dying, Alvin feels that he needs to see Lyle for what might possibly be the last time. There's a catch, however. Alvin doesn't have a driver's license due to his medical issues. Rose doesn't have one either, most likely due to those intellectual issues. And with the two of them living on disability, it's not like they have much money to get a bus ticket. (If you think about it, they do considering what Alvin is able to spend money on later in the movie, but at the same time getting a bus direct from Laurens to Mount Zion is thoroughly unlikely.)

What Alvin does have, however, is a riding lawn mower. So he decides that the only thing he can do is to get on that mower and start heading for Mount Zion, even though the mower probably isn't street legal. Alvin sets out on the sort of road trip reminiscent of a movie like Harry and Tonto, in which he's going to meet interesting people along with suffering all sorts of setbacks as he tries to get to Wisconsin to see his brother. Now, since we know that there's an actor playing his brother, we know that the brother survived the stroke (in fact, Lyle was several years older than Alvin but outlived Alvin) and that the two will meet in the end.

The Straight Story is one of those movies where there's not exactly a whole lot of plot to discuss beyond a man's desire to get from point A to point B. It's also one of the more easily accessible movies from David Lynch. And thanks to the performance of Richard Farnsworth, it's definitely worth the watch.

I bambini ci guardano

I've mentioned on several occasions over the past few years how I keeping winding up with a ton of foreign films that are just about to expire from the YouTube TV DVR that I need to watch before they expire. The latest example of that was The Children Are Watching Us.

Now, the first interesting thing is that this movie was made in Italy in 1943 which, as you may know, was the height of World War II. But there aren't any references to the war, which may be because it's based on a book that was released in the 1920s, never mind the political situation that might have prevented filmmakers from setting a story like this against the backdrop of the war.

Pricò is a boy of about 5 living in a fashionable part of a fashionable city, with a father rich enough that they have a maid as well as living in a co-op in a building where the big issue is the elevator being too subject to needing repairs. Pricò and his mother go to the park one afternoon and watch a puppet show, although the trip is really an excuse for Mom (Isa Pola) to go see her lover Roberto, not realizing that Pricò sees what's going on. Mom has reached the point where she can't take it any more, so that night she packs her bags to run off with Roberto.

Dad, now a single father, doesn't know what to do, so he sends Pricò off to live with a series of relatives. None of them have much of an idea what to do with such a mischievous little boy, or don't really have the space to put him up for an extended period of time. In any case, Mom returns home after a short period of time claiming that she's gotten Roberto out of her system for good, and would like to return and try to start anew. You wonder how the family is going to be able to put itself back together, but it's not as if there's a whole lot Dad or the boy can do, so Mom gets to live with them again. Besides, it might not be bad to have a boy's mom living with him.

It's the summer, so Dad also decides that a good thing to do would be to get Mom out of the city and to one of those resorts that also populated Hollywood films of the era. The family can spend some quality time together, and Roberto won't be around. And the vacation seems to go well. Except that Dad, being a working man, eventually has to go back to his office job in the city. He tells Mom to stay at the resort for a few more days with Pricò as it will be good for the boy. But wouldn't you know it, Roberto shows up at the resort. Apparently there weren't that many places people in that Italian social class could go back in those days. Sure enough, Mom and Roberto start up their relationship again, although this time the results are much worse.

The Children Are Watching Us was directed by Vittorio De Sica, who would go on after the war to make several famous neo-realist movies. The Children Are Watching Us shows some foreshadowing of that style, but as a whole the movie is much closer to the sort of conventional Hollywood movie you might see from that era. I mean that, however, in a good way, as The Children Are Watching Us is very well made and the sort of foreign film that would be more easily accessible to people who think of foreign films from that era as the sort of arthouse stuff that was disproportionately what wound up in America. It's absolutely worth watching if you get the chance.

Twilight glory

Christopher Plummer was honored last year in TCM's Summer Under the Stars, with several of his pictures that I hadn't seen before. One of those was Stage Struck, which came early in Plummer's career.

Plummer isn't really the star here; that honor goes to Susan Strasberg, also early in her career. She plays Eva Lovelace, a young woman originally from Vermont who goes to New York City because she just knows she can make it on the stage. Indeed, she basically shows up unannounced at the office of theatrical producer Lewis Easton (Henry Fonda). Why not start out at the top, after all? Also waiting to see Easton are an actor on the glide path to the end of his career, Robert Hedges (Herbert Marshall), and an up-and-coming playwright, Joe Sheridan (Christopher Plummer). Nice people to meet if you're trying to make it on Broadway, I suppose.

Eva is so obnoxiously pushy that Easton, just to get her out of his hair, has Joe tell her to come for an audition for a suppoting role in Joe's new play where an aging diva of an actress is starring. Eva has her own ideas about how the role should be played which conflct with what the producer and playwright want, so of course the audition goes badly. Eva's pushiness causes even more problems when she runs into Joe outside the premiere of that new play and gets him to invite her to the afterparty at Easton's swanky apartment. She has too much to drink and, when she's stonking drunk, starts doing impromptu Shakespeare readings in front of the embarrassed guests!

Worse, she passes out drunk in the guest room and tells Lewis she loves him. Now, if all of this sounds familiar, that's because it's a remake of Morning Glory from 25 years earlier, in which Katharine Hepburn played the aspiring young actress. So you may know where the story is going. Eva has to suffer for her art before triumphing on the stage. Lewis is of two minds about her as she's really not right for such an older man. So he has his secretaries lie to her about his being out of town, and tries to get Joe to send her away from New York. But events conspire to bring us to the final act where Eva gets the leading role and makes a success of it.

I'm not the biggest fan of Katharine Hepburn, so Morning Glory isn't exactly a favorite of mine. Amazingly, Susan Strasberg takes the role and runs with it in what feels like a desperate attempt to be even more obnoxious than Katharine Hepburn ever was. Stage Struck feels artificial, like somebody who knows nothing about the Broadway stage writing about it, and Strasberg is so unlikeable here that it makes the rest of the movie hard to watch. Everybody else tries and is professional in their roles, so I suppose it's a good thing that this didn't sink Christopher Plummer. The movie does have some nice period photography, in color, of the way Broadway was in the late 1950s, but that's about the only thing good about this movie.

The Magic Box

I've mentioned having a glut of foreign films to get through on my DVR before they expire, as well as, I think, a glut of westerns. I also happen to have quite a few British movies on my DVR and again I'm not so certain I'm going to wind up watching all of them before YouTube TV expires them. Another of those British movies is The Magic Box.

The film opens by identifying several people who are part of the invention of cinema in one way or another, before winding up on the name William Friese-Greene (played by Robert Donat). Now, since the movie gives his dates of birth and death, we know he's going to die, although that's not really the point of the movie. In London, someone shows up looking for William's second wife Edith (Margaret Johnston). There's a conference of film distributors in London which William is hoping to attend, although he's not a distributor and has been largely forgotten in the film world.

In the first flashback, we learn why William is little known. William had always been interested in photography, and he thought it would be great if pictures could be in the same living color as real life is. To that end he's become one of those tinkerers that are trying to come up with a great invention without the benefit of much formal training. William is living with Edith and their four sons in a rented house in Brighton, always trying to stay one step ahead of his creditors. Needless to say, they're not always successful. Ultimately, three of the sons decide they're going to enlist in the military even though they're not really old enough to do so, just to help out the father they love.

Meanwhile, back at the conference, William is listening to a bunch of people arguing over whether importing non-British movies is a good thing, or whether they're taking up too much of the market. At this point, William starts thinking about how he got involved in the film industry, although it wasn't really an industry at this point since nobody had even really inveted moving pictures, William being one of the early pioneers.

In the late 1870s, William was an apprentice to another photographer, Maurice Guttenberg, who ran a photography studio in a time when this was the only way to get pictures in a time-consuming and expensive process. William has ideas of his own, but he's not the boss. One of the customers is Helena (Maria Schell), whom William winds up marrying, remaining married until her death. They're successful in business, at least until William starts thinking about making pictures move, which is the first of the things that leads him to spending money and neglecting his business.

Real life tells us that William Friese-Greene did in fact die at that film conference after being asked to speak and suffering a massive heart attack after concluding his speech, so that portion of the movie is apparently accurate. He also apparently did spend all his wealth trying to come up with those inventions, dying in poverty. Unsurprisingly, Donat's portray is a very good acting performance. As for the film as a whole, it wasn't a big hit at the time, and I think having watched it, it feels a bit old-fashioned in the sense of it being rather too heroic in a movie biography sense. The movie winds up feeling a bit sterile as a result. That's a bit of a shame thanks to what should be interesting subject material and that acting performance from Donat.