Michael Redgrave, recently released from an alcoholic rehabilitation center, is the father of young Alec McCowen, who is to be hanged in a day or two. Alec has been convicted of the murder of a young girl. Redgrave is convinced he's innocent and spends the remaining hours attempting to prove it. It's a difficult job. Antecedent to the crime is a network of moves and counter-moves by a network of people with reasons to lie. It's all a tangled web.
Redgrave gives a fine performance as a man on the edge of the abyss, trembling and stuttering. As the final moments approach, he's positively frazzled -- unshaven and half hysterical. The other performers are uniformly professional except that Alec McCowen, who was later to be great as the detective in Hitchcock's "Frenzy," overdoes everything when he's on screen, as if performing for an acting class.
The direction is by Joseph Losey who also was later to become far more smooth. Here, it's jumpy. Sometimes the plot is hard for a viewer to follow. (No wonder Redgrave is so frustrated.) Too often the story resembles a made-for-television movie. It has Redgrave hurrying about from one possible source of information to another, begging for help. It picks up pace quickly towards the end and the climax comes as a complete surprise -- or at least it did to me.
It's worth watching but it's nothing special.
Redgrave gives a fine performance as a man on the edge of the abyss, trembling and stuttering. As the final moments approach, he's positively frazzled -- unshaven and half hysterical. The other performers are uniformly professional except that Alec McCowen, who was later to be great as the detective in Hitchcock's "Frenzy," overdoes everything when he's on screen, as if performing for an acting class.
The direction is by Joseph Losey who also was later to become far more smooth. Here, it's jumpy. Sometimes the plot is hard for a viewer to follow. (No wonder Redgrave is so frustrated.) Too often the story resembles a made-for-television movie. It has Redgrave hurrying about from one possible source of information to another, begging for help. It picks up pace quickly towards the end and the climax comes as a complete surprise -- or at least it did to me.
It's worth watching but it's nothing special.