Shooting on this movie wrapped in mid September, 1939, days after England declared war on Germany and it seems a peculiar choice given the climate in which it was made - war must surely have seemed inevitable virtually throughout 1939 - a climate which was surely crying out for lighter fare, musicals, comedies rather than turgid social comment with a downbeat ending. It represented the third teaming in two years of Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood and indeed Redgrave was the sole selling point for me as I am a great admirer and have still to see some of his work on film. In his favour director Carol Reed agrees with my own opinion that Hitchcock is overrated but alas, so too is Reed in my opinion. I watched recently his highly risible Climbing High - the second teaming, after The Lady Vanishes, of Redgrave and Lockwood and struggled to understand why it wasn't laughed off the screen and I find this only marginally better. Redgrave is excellent as one would expect but Emlyn Williams for example attempt to out ham Charles Laughton and labours under the misapprehension that he's acting on stage rather than screen as a result of which he 'points up' everything he says and does, pitching his performance to the Gods in the Sunderland Empire rather than the first row of the Odeon, Hull. Nancy Price seems to be auditioning for The Weird Sisters and so on. Clearly its heart was in the right place but certainly viewed today it fails to stand up.
Review of The Stars Look Down
