Film 2014 : High Treason (1951)
This was added to the Lovefilm rental list after Dominic Sandbrook used extracts from it in his Cold War mini-series. This was Roy Boulting's next project after Seven Days to Noon, a much more celebrated movie which usually gets an airing or two on TV every few months or so ; High Treason doesn't seem to be so ubiquitous, despite sharing some cast members (and indeed a character) with Seven Days.
Like its predecessor, it's a straightforward race-against-time thriller, this time following the combined forces of Special Branch, MI5 and Scotland Yard in trying to smash an underground spy ring. Much shoe leather and work with index cards is involved, as well as some outrageous strokes of luck -- for instance, when a street photographer hanging around outside a West End restaurant (one directly opposite the Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus) takes a snap of one of the suspects. And what suspects! Charles Lloyd Pack oozes contented, emollient charm as the treacherous civil servant Ward, resembling a benign Smiley. Kenneth Griffith is the sensitive, tormented young man duped into supplying fuses from his electrical shop that blow up the ship at the docks, his doubts and conscience only partially allayed by a visit from the beguiling Mary Morris. She's based at a Further Education College, run by the ever genial Laurence Naismith - day courses downstairs, council to further the cause of communism in the attic. (Upstairs there are beards, tweed jackets, leather elbow patches, horn rim glasses and the phrase "intellectual bourgeoisie".)
This may be the first film to feature fake GPO engineers bugging the phone lines on behalf of MI5, possibly initiating a noble tradition upheld in the second ever episode of Spooks (fake Gas board engineers bugging the smoke detectors.) I liked the fellow traveller who pointed out the absurdity of gathering all the fellow travellers together, so in effect neutralising the whole point of a sleeper cell structure.
The action finale takes place in what I assume to be the actual interior of Battersea Power Station -- lots of heavy steel instrumentation and bakelite power switches in evidence. The shootout isn't quite as well staged as the siege at the end of Went the Day Well?, my baseline for this sort of thing.
At only 89 minutes High Treason still finds time for cameos from Alfie Bass, Peter Jones and Dandy Nichols. Joan Hickson is especially good as Kenneth Griffith's confused, and then despairing mother. Anthony Nicholls (later Cmdr Tremayne in The Champions) is memorable as the local MP with an interest in Etruscan pottery - and 'true' democracy.
This held my attention throughout, helped no doubt by the splendid print on Strawberry Media's DVD (released March 2013.)
Next Episode : Death at Broadcasting House
Like its predecessor, it's a straightforward race-against-time thriller, this time following the combined forces of Special Branch, MI5 and Scotland Yard in trying to smash an underground spy ring. Much shoe leather and work with index cards is involved, as well as some outrageous strokes of luck -- for instance, when a street photographer hanging around outside a West End restaurant (one directly opposite the Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus) takes a snap of one of the suspects. And what suspects! Charles Lloyd Pack oozes contented, emollient charm as the treacherous civil servant Ward, resembling a benign Smiley. Kenneth Griffith is the sensitive, tormented young man duped into supplying fuses from his electrical shop that blow up the ship at the docks, his doubts and conscience only partially allayed by a visit from the beguiling Mary Morris. She's based at a Further Education College, run by the ever genial Laurence Naismith - day courses downstairs, council to further the cause of communism in the attic. (Upstairs there are beards, tweed jackets, leather elbow patches, horn rim glasses and the phrase "intellectual bourgeoisie".)
This may be the first film to feature fake GPO engineers bugging the phone lines on behalf of MI5, possibly initiating a noble tradition upheld in the second ever episode of Spooks (fake Gas board engineers bugging the smoke detectors.) I liked the fellow traveller who pointed out the absurdity of gathering all the fellow travellers together, so in effect neutralising the whole point of a sleeper cell structure.
The action finale takes place in what I assume to be the actual interior of Battersea Power Station -- lots of heavy steel instrumentation and bakelite power switches in evidence. The shootout isn't quite as well staged as the siege at the end of Went the Day Well?, my baseline for this sort of thing.
At only 89 minutes High Treason still finds time for cameos from Alfie Bass, Peter Jones and Dandy Nichols. Joan Hickson is especially good as Kenneth Griffith's confused, and then despairing mother. Anthony Nicholls (later Cmdr Tremayne in The Champions) is memorable as the local MP with an interest in Etruscan pottery - and 'true' democracy.
This held my attention throughout, helped no doubt by the splendid print on Strawberry Media's DVD (released March 2013.)
Next Episode : Death at Broadcasting House