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Undescribable Perfection

One of my all time favorites.

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Initially this movie was set to star Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave, fresh from their success in "A Lady Vanishes" but something happened and Barry Barnes turns up as the earnest young lawyer who has a belief in the young nurse - he's okay but lacks Redgrave's charisma.After being cleared of a murder charge Nurse Graham (Lockwood) is confidant that her acquittal will be able to secure her another nursing post - but people remember the old saying "where there's smoke, there's fire"!! One day she finds a mysterious package, it is a "help wanted" section of a newspaper with a "nurse required" ad circled (that she didn't even question who would have sent it was a major hole in the story but oh well...). And since Emlyn Williams, who specialized in sinister spivs had already made an appearance at her trial, it had his handy work all over it!! Ann applies but sick of rejection uses the name Ann Lovell: she is given the job with no references and, surprise, surprise, Williams plays Tracy, the supercilious butler and also, no surprises, you know exactly where the movie is heading!!Tracy is involved with Mrs. Bentley (Margaretta Scott) whose invalid husband takes to Ann (even changing his will!!). Although he doesn't realise it, he is not long for this world and the dynamic duo think that by hiring Ann, whose nursing career is already in tatters, they have found the perfect "patsy" for their scheme. The murder seems foolproof and once again Ann is on trial for her life - all seems lost, people have heard "I didn't know he'd changed his will" all before!! - until Stephen comes up with an ingenious twist - but will it work!!Not really a work to hold up to Reed's best ie "The Fallen Idol" but despite some plot holes it runs smoothly, thanks to a solid cast. Margaret Lockwood is perfect as Ann, not really grasping what is happening to her but for me it is Emlyn Williams as the nasty Tracy who rivets the viewers attention!!Highly Recommended.

A young nurse who has been acquitted of poisoning her employer manages to find work under another name - and is accused of murder, by the same method, a second time. We know the guilty parties well in advance, and the solution of the crime by the nurse's attorney owes more to luck and intuition than to detection. There's no chase scene, no romance, not a great deal of suspense. From Carol Reed, the same director who made "Night Train to Munich", "Odd Man Out" and "The Third Man", this is a remarkably bland film. Still, it's very smoothly made, everything is focused on the story line, and the acting is uniformly excellent. It's a solid, professional piece of work (and I know that sounds like damning with faint praise), and while there's no urgent reason to see it more than once, it's certainly worth seeing once.

Margaret Lockwood is "The Girl in the News" as a nurse who is acquitted of murder, only to find herself accused again. Carol Reed directed, and besides Lockwood, it stars Emlyn Williams and Roger Livesey. Lockwood is Anne Graham, a young nurse working in a household when her invalid employer takes too many sleeping pills. Graham is accused of murder but acquitted. However, she finds getting a job impossible until she changes her name. Someone mails her a classified ad for a nursing job, for which she applies and is accepted. Then history repeats itself.A very good film, excellently directed by Reed with an underplayed performance by Lockwood. Emlyn Williams plays her attorney. Though I figured this film out before the plot unfolded, "The Girl in the News" is still good and worth seeing.

Core to the plot is the extent to which a justifiable acquittal at a trial nevertheless prejudices the accused's future life. Given modern day concerns over sensational press coverage this is an issue as valid today (probably more so) than it was in war-time Britain. But the film does not follow this line, rather it presents us with a good old-fashioned courtroom drama, culminating in a finale of which Perry Mason would have been proud. Quite how the hero lawyer manages this stretches the judicial imagination somewhat, especially with a flawed witness, whose evidence clinches the outcome, not having to testify from the witness box.Despite these reservations this is an enjoyable enough production which canters along at a good pace without any pretensions to high art. And it was nice to see some early work from two actresses, Irene Handl (particularly malevolent as the first "victim") and Kathleen Harrison, who both went on to greater things in post-war British TV.