Main Cast: Richard Egan, Dana Wynter, Cameron Mitchell, Sidney Blackmer, Marjorie Rambeau
Release Year: 1955
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
Plot
Miscegenation, that old reliable bugaboo of many a Southern-based novel, is at the center of Hamilton Basso's The View from Pompey's Head. The film version stars Richard Egan as a New York lawyer who returns to his Southern home town to investigate an embezzlement charge. The victim is an ageing novelist (Sidney Blackmer), whose royalties are mysteriously disappearing; the novelist's wife (Marjorie Rambeau) suspects that her husband is being cheated. But it is the novelist himself who is siphoning off his earnings, in order to provide for his African-American mother, and to buy her silence regarding his mixed parentage. The wife is apprised of the situation, and agrees to keep mum. With all this going on, it's understandable that few viewers remember the love triangle between Richard Egan, Dana Wynter and Cameron Mitchell which motivates the rest of The View from Pompey's Head. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The handsomely mounted and awkwardly titled The View from Pompey's Head is a good but uneven little film that tries to straddle two stools and therefore falls between them. On the one hand, Pompey's is a good old-fashioned steamy southern melodrama, with miscegenation threatening to demonstrate just how threadbare are the societal underpinnings of the small town portrayed in the film. On the other, it's an intelligent, literate drama about the way in which personal heritage can become a stifling, deathly trap. It's hard to combine these two, although apparently the Hamilton Basso novel upon which the film is based was successful. Philip Dunne's serious, sincere adaptation can't pull off the trick, but it still results in a picture that is strangely haunting, despite the fact that it feels emotionally hollow at its core. Perhaps Dunne as director has tried to film adapter Dunne's work too tastefully; certainly, Elmer Bernstein's occasionally overwrought score keeps indicating emotional depths that the characters themselves seem reluctant to explore. In spite of this, there are a number of powerful moments in the film, and though one never feels as involved in the story as one wants, Pompey's does linger in the memory. Richard Egan is fine in the lead, and Dana Wynter is adequate as his lost love, but it's Sidney Blackmer and especially Marjorie Rambeau who turn in the most memorable performances. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Rosemarie Bowe - Kit; Ruby Goodwin - Esther; Evelyn Rudie - Cecily; Howard Wendell - Duncan; Dayton Lummis - Barlowe; Bess Flowers - Miss Mabry; Rob Johnson - Bellhop; Bill Walker - Pullman Porter; Frances Driver - Servant; Charles Watts - Police Sergeant; Tom Wilson - Trainman; Charles Herbert - Pat; DeForest Kelley; Jerry Paris - Ian Garrick; Jack Mather - Policeman
