Tiger in the Smoke

This film is not in any way a gripping story, in fact, it seems as one watches it, to be three films cut and compressed to make one. So, what's wrong with it? The main problem is the fact that it has too many characters, too many mediocre actors (one appallingly bad one) too many angles and not enough of a story, the denouement is positively under whelming and one is left not caring about anyone, except perhaps, the canon played beautifully by that most reliable and welcome of actors, Laurence Naismith.

So why am I bothering to write about it? Because it is one of those worthwhile ventures, one of those film projects that had so much going for it on paper that it deserved to become a huge success. The directing of camera was for the most part brilliant, with many innovative techniques, some of them well ahead of the industry's time. The directing of the actors was uneven and sometimes non existent, which allowed better actors to get disorderly and the poor ones (there were a few) to go off the edge or simply flounder, the actor playing Johnny Havoc, the film's central bad guy, was simply not up to the role, and should have been recast, he indulged in "mad acting" "golden haze" and "falling on furniture" all things no actor should ever be allowed to get away with, and in his one great scene (in the cellar with his gang) he blew every opportunity the script afforded him to shine and to create great drama, as a result, the scene fell like seeds on stony ground.

Having said this, the film was made with some great care and there were moments that broke all barriers for the time. The actor playing the Inspector(against type from the book)was good, and the supporting police force actors were good, Charles Victor(though very near the edge most of the time) provided a welcome uplift, and Laurence Naismith was (as usual) on top of his job.

Donald Sinden had not at this time developed his hard jaw and tight teeth acting and so was quite acceptable as the new man in the life of the love interest (an actress who did so very well with what she was given, which wasn't very much) and he was handsome enough to be taken for Richard Green.

This is a good film if you allow for the obvious flaws, and deserves a place alongside great works, for it's bravery and innovative techniques, as well as some of the character acting, odd bits of which, were brilliant.

Dracher

Pretty good movie this.

The adapters very sensibly completely omitted the vapid Albert Campion and the pallid Amanda. As usual with Margery Allingham, they are entirely redundant to the plot, and I've never found either of them even slightly credible.

The ending shows the British cinema's usual utter inability to deal with landscape.

Tiger in the Smoke from 1956 is based on a British novel by Marjorie Allingham featuring her detective Albert Campion. Most of the reviewers seem to dislike him and are just as happy he was dropped from the film script. Well, I loved the Campion tv series and thought Peter Davison was delightful.

Anyway, Roy Ward Baker directed this very atmospheric film starring Muriel Pavlov, Donald Sinden, Bernard Miles, Laurence Naismith and Charles Victor.

The first part of the film is done in heavy fog when a woman (Pavlov) is asked to identify a man claiming to be het dead husband. She is in fact about to marry someone else (Donald Sinden).

However, the man is not her husband, just disguised to resemble him. Later he is murdered. A group of buskers kidnap her fiance.

Right away, we the audience have no idea what's going on. Before her husband died, he told fellow soldiers (now the buskers) that a fabulous treasure is hidden in a chateau. They want it.

The film becomes less interesting when the fog clears. One of the men (Tony Wright) is totally obsessed by the idea of this treasure and determined to find it.

While the acting is very good, for me the film was somewhat of a hodge-podge. Nevertheless, it has some excellent elements and for atmosphere alone is worth seeing.

This is a very tricky intrigue which no one can make head or tail of to begin with, as no one can understand why anyone would try to mask as a war casualty long after the war is over, leading to constantly denser fog of a mysterious intrigue involving buskers, who actually lead the perplexing events - they are the chief charm of the film, although there are many such, amazing characters above all, Laurence Naismith as the canon, Bernard Miles as the gang leader, Kenneth Griffith as Crutches, and some fabulous old ladies, Beatrice Varley as the unfathomable Lucy Cash for one. Donald Sinden is the leading male, but although a good reliable actor, he always plays himself and was never very versatile. Muriel Pavlow is better. But the intrigue is the main thing.

The lurid photography adds a special flavour to the film, - as the kidnapped victim is dragged away his despair is reflected in the photography of all the neon signs that are passed, the camera's way of following the murderer gives him some mythic magic until he finally appears, and so on. This film is full of tricks, the action is very dense and concentrated and horribly exciting until the mystery is cleared, - and then follows a cliffhanger.

Much underrated, this is a film that deserves some attention.

I saw this gripping,atmospheric little picture on its initial British release half a century ago.I was eight years old,and it's one of a handful of British pictures from that era which haunted me for years. It's very rarely shown on British T.V.,so I never got to see it again until 1985. It had held up remarkably well, and I've watched the videotaped copy I made several times since. As far as I'm aware it was never made commercially available on video, and I'm hoping it might join the growing number of rare British thrillers from the fifties made available on DVD.

Director Roy Baker is probably best known these days for the horror pictures he made for Hammer and Amicus in the seventies, all of which are markedly inferior to his earlier British work. His first picture, the moody psychological thriller "The October Man",(1948) starring John Mills,is exceptionally good, and "Tiger in the Smoke" has all the same virtues; a strong cast of seasoned character actors, a pungent sense of place, highly effective suspense and a sinister aura of moral decay. Early scenes involving a seedy gang of ex-commando street musicians are masterly.

Muriel Pavlow was surely the most beautiful and talented of the Rank Organisation "charm school" actresses, and Tony Wright is chillingly effective as the psychotic Johnny Havoc, whose search for hidden treasure sets the plot in motion. The critic and theorist Raymond Durgnat wrote in 1969 that this was the most dreamlike British film outside of the horror genre. It deserves wider appreciation.