GB
1948
1hr 45mins
Dir: Terence Young
Starring: Eric Portman and Edana Romney
An art collector believes his mistress is a reincarnation from 400 years before
This brilliant piece of pure Gothic drama was one of the most engaging pieces of cinema made in Britain in 1948. Watch it, because it has been seriously overlooked. The stunning Edana Romney appears in her sole major film role and plays a married woman who transitions from housewife to muse and finally into goddess. The film also features two quite rare scenes in North Wales, filmed at a station on what was possibly the Blaenau Ffestiniog line. The first scene shows a train hauled by an ex-LNWR 18in 0-6-0 Goods, known as a ‘Cauliflower’ or ‘Crested Goods’, and the second shows ex-LMS Stanier Class 3P 2-6-2T No.133 at the head of a train. Although the first view has the locomotive partly obscured by a wall, the second sequence is very, very, good indeed. Look out for the early reference to Brief Encounter’s ‘grit in the eye scene’, a scene to which viewers would have been all too familiar with. The film was inspired by the 1941 novel of the same title by Christopher Massie.
