Portmanteau film which tells four stories, all about people who wind up on a train that crashes – sort of like The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The best of them features Peter Finch in his first British film – he’s really superb as a nervous Shakespearean actor who strangles his wife and puts her body in a box. There's one where a mousy British girl, a little like the one Joan Fontaine played in Rebecca, sacrifices all for her former German POW lover; she is touchingly played by Joan Dowling who killed herself a few years after this was made. There's some domestic drama with Jack Warner covering from her daughter - who is tempted to become "easy" (i.e date Americans) but holds strong. And an unfunny one about a philandering conductor (John Clements) whose wife (Valerie Hobson, who in real life married the unfaithful Profumo) is okay with it.
There's an awful lot of social realism background - shots of trains, and chats with conductors at the train station - with a melodramatic plot. Finch steals the show, although it's very convenient he survives the train crash to have a thing fall on him.
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