Monday, May 02, 2016

Movie review - "The Girl in the News" (1940) **

Unpretentious little British melodrama which reunites Carol Reed and Margaret Lockwood in what was their fifth teaming, I believe. It has an intriguing idea: Lockwood is a nurse who is put on trial for killing a patient; she just gets off in part due to the skill of her lawyer Barry Barnes, but when a second patient is killed things look grim.

Oddly, Lockwood played a version of this in the later movie Bedelia where she was guilty of knocking off various husbands. Here she's innocent. And this could have made an ideal Hitchcock movie, with it's thriller aspects, lawyer falling in love with accused, butler having affair with married man. But there is not much pace - most of the action is set around courtrooms.

Lockwood is warm and sympathetic - she made such a good bitch later in her career that it's good to be reminded what a winning heroine she could be. Barnes is a wet drip (something many British leading men of this period were). There is a strong support cast, including Emlyn Williams (suspicious butler), Roger Livesey (the detective - shame he didn't play the male lead), Margaretta Scott (non grieving widow). Script is by Sidney Gilliat so it's logical and well done. It just lacks spark ad humour.

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