Review of The Angel with the Trumpet

In 1948 Basil Sydney and Eileen Herlie played Claudius and Gertrude in Olivier's Hamlet and two years later they played another married couple in this curate's egg of a movie, a turgid adaptation of what was clearly a turgid novel, and for good measure Norman Wooland, another member of the Hamlet cast, also appears. Anthony Bushell, best known as an actor specialising in military roles, directs with unsure footedness the stop-start saga of a Viennese family from the turn of the century to the second world war (at which point it begins to resemble The Mortal Storm). Wilfrid Hyde White, John Justin, Oskar Werner and Maria Schell contrive to give the impression they're in the same film but it's worth seeing once.