Following a Netflix recommendation, I ordered the Criterion edition of the 1946 whodunit "Green for Danger," cowritten and directed by Sidney Gilliat (who is best known for coauthoring the script of "The Lady Vanishes," a very quirky/cheerful thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1938 Gilliat also coauthored the script to pretty good 1940 "Night Train to Munich").

Another recommendation is that "Green for Danger" reputedly was one of the best roles Alastair Sim had. For me, Sim is the only Ebenezer Scrooge (in the 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol"). He also played the bishop to Peter O'Toole's mad earl in "The Ruling Class" (1972), a sinister-seeming possible spie in Cottage to Let (1941) and Mr. Potter to Ian Carmichael's Henry Palfrey in "School for Scoundrels" (1960).

Unfortunately, although voicing over the film's narrative, Sim--in the role of Inspector Cockrill of Scotland Yard--does not appear until midway through (almost exactly at the midpoint). The half of the movie in which he is on-site and on the case is far superior to the first half in which an elderly mailman (Moore Marriott) is buried under rubble from a German rocket-bomb and dies before routine surgery can begin, a nurse (Judy Campbell) proclaims that the mailman was murdered, and is herself murdered.

The suspects are the surgeon, Mr. Eden (the smarmy Leo Genn) the anesthesiologist Dr. Barnes(an uptight Trevor Howard) and the three surviving nurses. Working in a wartime hospital in the countryside, none of them gets much sleep. A new director (Ronald Adam) is quick to scapegoat Dr. Barnes ( but alienates the whole team almost as well as Inspector Cockrill will.

Cockrill (Sim) is a vigorously omniscient detective, who is right about as often as Inspector Clousseau later would be. Cockrill is less bumbling, though not unbumbling, and takes sadistic glee in unsettling his suspects. Even knowing that one of the team is a murderer who is a threat to their lives, the team members are so annoyed and humiliated by Cockrill's investigative methods that they hang together. Barnes despises Eden and the two have a knock-down, drag-out fight that Cockrill prevents his assistant (George Woodbridge) from interfering with--though he does keep a grandfather clock from crashing down on them.

Getting things wrong, including in concluding whodunit in a mystery novel he is reading, does not reduce Cockrill's arrogance. Not that the audience (at least this one) is at all likely to figure out whodunit or why any better. The murder mystery plot is very complicated, and I retain doubt about how the "murder weapon" could be deployed with confidence even after the end.

As a black comedy and as a whodunit puzzle, the second half of "Green for Danger" is excellent. I think that if I had not been watching it for Sim's turn as Inspector Cockrill, I would not have gotten through the first half, a soap opera of jealousies at a high pitch of hysteria. None of the four main male characters in the movie is even close to being likable. Two of the nurses are sympathetic and brave: Woods (Megs Jenkins) and Freddie Linley (Sally Gray).

The Criterion DVD's sound and visual transfers are good (not flawless, but the flaws seem to derive from the original negative). Subtitles ("closed captioning") is available. In addition to a chatty commentary track by Bruce Eder (about British cinema in the years immediately after the Second World War more than about "Green for Danger" in particular), there is a good 14-minute feature by Geoff Brown on the career of Gilliat and his longtime collaborator Frank Launder (Brown is the author of a book on their films). Oddly, no trailers (English or American) are included. (And there is a booklet that I have not seen.)


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© 2007, Stephen O. Murray

Although I wouldn't consider Sim here to be "endearing," "Green for Danger" is very British, and thus may be a part of Barbara's Fabulous French and Equally Endearing English Finds writeoff.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD