Esmond Knight

The Halfway House

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The guests hold a seance

Ealing Studios’ The Halfway House is a halfway sort of film. Made in 1944, it’s not quite propaganda but is clearly on that road. Not quite a ghost story either, or not the usual sort of ghost story. Brigadoon is somewhere in the back of the plotting. A mysterious pub out in delightful sun-dappled Welsh countryside, bombed out of existence a year before, somehow rematerialises, ready to welcome unwitting visitors. The people who turn up are all in need of spiritual succour. David Davies (Esmond Knight), a conductor with a terminal disease. Captain Fortescue (Guy Middleton), a professional crook insisting on his rank. Richard French (Richard Bird), a squadron leader in the throes … Read more

Contraband

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Valerie Hobson in a hat and with a cigarette in her hand

Powell and Pressburger’s second collaboration, 1940’s Contraband (aka Blackout) is a knockabout knock-off of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps – two people yoked together against their will, a Nazi cell and so on – which also goes large on Hitchcock’s light-hearted energy and his fondness for a set piece. Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson had both been in P&P’s first collaboration, the previous year’s The Spy in Black, and this time around play a couple charging around London under blackout conditions. She’s a spy who stole the shore passes issued to Veidt’s Captain Andersen, a Danish sea captain whose freighter has been impounded by the British authorities. He’s keen to get them back and … Read more