GB
1949
1hr 46mins
Dirs: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Starring: David Farrar and Kathleen Byron
Germans drop explosive booby-traps on Britain in 1943 and the embittered expert who’ll have to disarm them fights a private battle with alcohol
This decent drama was based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Nigel Balchin and was actually quite ahead of its time in its portrayal of bomb disposal. David Farrar’s bitterness towards the incompetent management to which he feels is holding him back (not his alcohol problem then!) is something which grew to become a fairly acute problem during immediate post-war Britain. The film includes a very rare scene at Abbotsbury station in Dorset with a GWR 1400 Class 0-4-2T on an auto-train. Abbotsbury was the terminus of the branch from Upwey and it closed in November 1952.
