Film 2014 : Footsteps in the Fog (1955)
Filmed in lovely autumnal Technicolor at Shepperton, this is a Victorian-set thriller that is a showcase for actual-couple-at-the-time Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger. She’s Lily, the ‘guttersnipe’ housemaid to the recently widowed Mr Lowry - Granger brooding away like Rochester, and with a full length portrait of his late wife a la Maxim de Winter in the study. The movie tips its hand early as Lily discovers exactly how Mrs Lowry died (“It wasn’t gastro-enteritis!”) by performing some scientific tests on some unfortunate vermin with a prescription bottle. So a murderer becomes beholden to a blackmailer, and Lily begins a mini-Eliza Doolittle style transformation, as she trades up her housemaid’s outfit for the housekeeper’s, with a particularly stunning scarlet number making an appearance in the last third of the movie.
Also turning up about an hour in - and fourth billed on the credits - is William Hartnell as Lily’s shifty brother-in-law, bubbling with nervous energy as he bets on the gee gees whilst inveigling an incriminating letter from his wife.
Footsteps in the Fog is a brisk, well-crafted movie (Shepperton can do fog really, really well) and a doomy, noir sensibility as the picture dares us to sympathise with the complicity of Lily and the crimes of Lowry. Bonus points too for employing Victor Maddern (this time he’s an inebriated witness to a murder) and a fake-out handwriting evidence scene at the end. Granger is restrained when he could have gone over the top, and Simmons is excellent as a woman using any means she can to advance herself.
So that’s Jacqueline Hill in 1953, William Hartnell in 1955. I wonder what William Russell was up to in 1957?
Next Episode : The Big Chance
Also turning up about an hour in - and fourth billed on the credits - is William Hartnell as Lily’s shifty brother-in-law, bubbling with nervous energy as he bets on the gee gees whilst inveigling an incriminating letter from his wife.
Footsteps in the Fog is a brisk, well-crafted movie (Shepperton can do fog really, really well) and a doomy, noir sensibility as the picture dares us to sympathise with the complicity of Lily and the crimes of Lowry. Bonus points too for employing Victor Maddern (this time he’s an inebriated witness to a murder) and a fake-out handwriting evidence scene at the end. Granger is restrained when he could have gone over the top, and Simmons is excellent as a woman using any means she can to advance herself.
So that’s Jacqueline Hill in 1953, William Hartnell in 1955. I wonder what William Russell was up to in 1957?
Next Episode : The Big Chance