Green for Danger (The Criterion Collection)
by Sidney Gilliat
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Actor: Alastair Sim, Leo Genn, Rosamund John, Sally Gray, Trevor HowardDirector: Sidney Gilliat
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-02-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Green for Danger (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: A Murder Classic From Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, With Alastair Sim
Summary: 5 Stars
"My presence lay over the hospital like a pall," Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim) tells us. "I found it all tremendously enjoyable."
Green for Danger, a classic 1947 Frank Launder/Sidney Gilliat murder movie takes place in England at a small civilian hospital in 1944. A patient dies on the operating table and only six people -- two doctors and four nurses -- could have done it. The movie opens with Cockrill typing out a report, which at the end of the film turns out to be a letter of resignation. In a flashback voice-over Cockrill shows us the village postman/air-raid warden, Joseph Higgins. "I begin with him because he was the first to die." Then he shows us the hospital staff around an operating table. "By August 22nd," he tells us, "two of these people would be dead, and one of them a murderer." It is after the second death that Inspector Cockrill...confident, pleased with himself and often wrong...shows up. Cockrill eventually solves the case in a conclusion which is tense, amusing and appalling.
We meet Dr. Barnes (Trevor Howard), the anesthetist, an unsmiling, tense and jealous man; Mr. Eden (Leo Genn), the surgeon, a smooth womanizer who has his eye on Nurse Freddie Linley (Sally Gray), Barnes' fiancee; Nurse Samson (Rosamund John), who's mother died in the rubble of a bomb attack; Nurse Bates (Judy Campbell), who found her affair with Eden ended; and Nurse Woods (Megs Jenkins), who has a shameful secret she wants to keep hidden. Higgins must have recognized something or someone while he was being rolled in for surgery, and died for it under anesthesia. Nurse Bates realizes how the murder happened and who must have done it. After foolishly and jealously saying so during a staff party, she meets the murderer in the deserted operating room...and also pays the penalty for knowing too much.
Now that Inspector Cockrill is on the case...well, we don't know what to make of things. Up to now the movie has been a tensely told story of mystery, motives and murder. Cockrill, however, seems determined to take our expectations of murder and turn them into something resembling farce. How did the anesthesia for Higgins work, he asks Dr. Barnes. "I gave nitrous oxide at first, to get him under." "Oh yes," Cockrill says, "the stuff the dentist gives you, hmmm...commonly known as laughing gas." "Used to be," Barnes says, "actually, the impurities cause the laughs." Inspector Cockrill, "Oh, just the same as in our music halls."
The murderer is caught after Cockrill gets things confidently wrong a few times. He stages a tense recreation of the first death in the operating room. His plan works, but with one flaw that, while justice may have been done, is startling when it happens. Cockrill, while abashed is not deterred. He finishes his report. "In view of my failure -- correction, comparative failure -- I feel that I have no alternative but to offer you, sir, my resignation...in the sincere hope that you will not accept it." You'll need to picture how Alastair Sim says this.
The movie works so well because the murders and the relationships are treated seriously while Cockrill (meaning director Gilliat and actor Sim) is subversively turning the detective tradition on its head. Alastair Sim was one of the greatest of Britain's eccentric star character players. He had a large bald head, big eyes and a way of delivering lines that could be sly, funny and always distinctive. Adding to the odd nature of the film are German V-1 Flying Bombs, doodlebugs. We'll suddenly hear a sound like a loud motorbike engine droning overhead...then silence as the engine cuts out. Ten seconds later the bomb hits and explodes. You'd better take shelter fast. Doodlebugs were a weapon of terror in 1944, and we're never quite sure if a doodlebug is suddenly going to become a major plot element. At the same time, Alastair Sim's efforts as Inspector Cockrill to find shelter when he hears an engine stop are amusing.
The team of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder were responsible for some of Britain's best comedies and a few first-rate dramas. They were both excellent screenwriters and directors and usually operated as their own producers. Their high water years were between 1940 and 1955. If you have a chance, I doubt if you'll be disappointed by these of their films: Night Train to Munich, The Unpublished Story, The Rake's Progress, I See a Dark Stranger, The Happiest Days of Your Life, and the St. Trinians series.
Description of Green for Danger (The Criterion Collection)
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