- Director: Sidney Gilliat
- AMG Rating:
- Genre: Mystery
- Movie Type: Police Detective Film, Whodunit
- Themes: Doctors and Patients
- Main Cast: Alastair Sim, Leo Genn, Trevor Howard, Sally Gray, Rosamund John, Judy Campbell
- Release Year: 1947
- Country: UK
- Run Time: 91 minutes
Plot
At a World War II emergency hospital, a postman dues under anesthetic during a relatively minor operation. One of the nurses who was present announces that the man's death was no accident, but a murder -- and then she, too, is murdered. The police are called in, led by Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim) of Scotland Yard, and he soon determines that any one of the five surviving members of the surgical team might have had a motive for the murders. In the course of his investigation, he also uncovers an array of both eccentric and ugly personal information about most of those present, but no killer that he can ascertain for certain. He must finally draw the murderer out by putting one of the suspects at risk. In the midst of the suspense are moments of droll comedy, of the sort that one would expect from a movie made by the authors of The Lady Vanishes, along with a palpably rich late wartime atmosphere which, surprisingly, did not repel war-weary audiences on either side of the Altantic. Indeed, Sim is so beguilingly witty and charismatic in his eccentric way as Inspector Cockrill, that the wonder is that there was never a follow-up movie or even a series built around his character. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie GuideReview
Sidney Gilliat's Green for Danger was the most inventive murder mystery to come out of England in the eight years since Alfred Hitchcock left the country -- and in a sense, it's no surprise that this would be the case as it was co-written, produced, and directed by the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, the two authors of the screenplay for Hitchcock's last great English thriller, The Lady Vanishes. Based on Christianna Brand's novel, the 1946 movie is a fascinating variation on that venerable English creation, the drawing room thriller -- in this case, the drawing room is replaced by a hospital operating theater, and instead of family members, the suspects are comprised of the surgical team, doctors and surgeons (two separate professional classes in England), and the nurses with whom they may (or may not) be involved. The movie featured one of the niftiest murders seen in a movie in years: the victim is killed on an operating table, in front of two doctors and a team of nurses who are unable to discern what has happened or why. World War II and Germany's V-1 bombings of England also figure into the plot and add to the atmosphere of uncertainty and suspense surrounding the events taking place in the hospital.Green for Danger also has an extremely important place in the history of British film production, as it was the first feature film after the war to be shot at the reopened Pinewood Studios, which was an important symbol of the industry's return to peacetime -- indeed, a close look at the credits shows this as the first film for members of a new generation (or, perhaps, a newly promoted generation would be a better way of putting it) of production designers (Peter Proud), cinematographers (Wilkie Cooper), etc., their careers newly restarted and on track to do major films into the 1960s and beyond. The movie also introduced Alastair Sim to international audiences as a serious leading actor, and set the stage for the stardom that he would later achieve in Scrooge, and again in the hands of Launder and Gilliat in The Belles of St. Trinian's. Additionally, the movie's casting, plotting, and execution served as a prime example of how British studios were going to compete with their higher-budgeted American rivals in the years after the war: by making movies that were cleverer and more offbeat than anything coming out of America. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Cast
- Alastair Sim - Inspector Cockrill
- Leo Genn - Mr. Eden
- Trevor Howard - Dr. Barney Barnes
- Sally Gray - Nurse Linley
- Rosamund John - Esther Sanson
- Judy Campbell - Marion Bates
