The Interrupted Journey (1949) A Brit Noir from the Twilight Zone

Directed by Daniel Birt (The Deadly Game (1954)). 

For various reasons, even on a classic film channel like TCM, Brit  Noirs get short shrift. Partially because of the drip, drip, drip of misinformation that's gotten ingrained over the years. 

"There’s a perverse irony in how a definition of “film noir” was doomed from the beginning. What began as a disparaging remark for a group of films in Paris in the 1930s slowly morphed into an incoherent and inaccurate definition for another group of films in post-war Hollywood. It took decades for the transformation and required slipshod scholarship, inaccurate research and the misreading of simple film reviews in 1946 for the corruption to begin. Academic posturing added to the confusion and created a theory that now seems to include every film made in post-war Hollywood with a fedora, a shadow and a dame in it. It's a twisted story worthy of a pulp novel." (Willian Ahern - The Death Of Film Noir)

Partially because they most likely aren't in the TCM library, and also because if you narrowly define Noirs as only a sub category of the Hollywood Crime Genre rather than an International Style, a lot of  Noir Style Classics are going to be criminally overlooked. 

Of course I have seen some great Brit Noir on the channel. The Third Man (1949)) is in regular rotation. Others have aired a few times over the years. Maybe they were part of a content trade deal with the BBC. Films like , I Became a Criminal, Originally titled They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), Brighton Rock (1947), Odd Man Out (1947), and The Fallen Idol (1948) have been shown, but the only two, correctly me if I'm wrong, to appear so far on Noir Alley have been Brighton Rock and The Third Man. One source I've seen lists 138 Brit Noir that were made roughly between 1938 and the early 1960s. That's quite a bit of Noir off American Noir-dar screens.

The Interrupted Journey was written by Michael Pertwee (original story) Cinematography by Erwin Hillier (I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)), Music was by Stanley Black.

Valerie Hobson as Carol North

The film stars Valerie Hobson (Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Werewolf of London (1935)), Richard Todd (For Them That Trespass (1949), Never Let Go (1960), The Big Sleep (1978) as John North.

Richard Todd as John North

With Christine Norden as Susan Wilding (Mine Own Executioner (1947)), Alexander Gauge as Jerves Wilding, and Vida Hope (another Brit Noir vet) as Miss Marchmont.

The Story

John North a struggling writer, is feeling pressure from his nagging wife Carol, who wants him to take a job offered to him by her father in his chemical fertilizer plant. He doesn't want to be tied to that yoke and the prospect of running away with his London publisher's wife Susan Wilding who is sympathetic to his writing aspirations seems the brighter way to go.  

John and Carol

They plan their escape from London. John waits outside the Wilding's flat until he sees Susan husband Jerves leave the house. A few minutes later, Susan exits with a suitcase in hand. 

Alexander Gauge as Jerves Wilding

She meets John who is waiting in an alley entrance and they both flee down the corridor and into a waiting cab. However, when John glances backwards over his shoulder he sees a man in a mackintosh who appears to be following them. 

The mackintosh man

the cab getaway

Soon afterwards at the station, while awaiting their train to depart, John again thinks he spots the man in the mackintosh while they are grabbing a quick dinner. Susan asks John if he's told his wife. He tells her he wrote her a letter. She asks if he mailed it yet, He says no. Susan indicates that there is a letter drop on the wall. John walks over, and slips it in. 

They take an express heading West out of London. John mentions to Susan that the train will go right past his house. Susan says too bad he didn't know sooner, he could have just throw the letter out the window as they passed John's house. 

You could have dropped it out the window

The flashback

During the journey we get John's flashback to most of the above background story of how things progressed to this point. John feeling a bit apprehensive now, sees that Susan has dozed off and slips out their compartment. He needs some air. 

A  conductor passing up the corridor announces to an inquisitive passenger that the train is approaching Longley Tunnel. Its more darkened and the swaying is more pronounced in the corridor. The volume of the train's soundscape is amplified. Tunnel concentrated Cloudy whisps of steam and smoke. John turns and watches the conductor approaching from the end of the car. As the conductor passes John, He sees  the same mackintosh man again near the end of the corridor. His back is to John. Startled, he turns around to go the other way and sees that Jerves is blocking the corridor. The conductor has already passed him.

Jarvis standing in a flickering shadow / light,  grinning at him dementedly, and obscured somewhat even more by steam. More unnerved now, John backs into his and Susan's compartment. He sees that Susan is still sleeping. He's got cold feet. Reaches up and pulls the communication stop cord. The train slowly drops its acceleration. 

He slips on his overcoat grabs his suitcase and opens the compartments exit door and hops down to the railroad embankment as the train stops. He runs off across the field to his house just past the end of the Longley Tunnel.

John shows up at home at an odd hour. To explain the odd hour of arrival, he explains to his wife he took a Green Line bus home instead of the train. He also says that he's decided that she was right and that he will take the job her father offered. Carol is delighted!

All domestic trauma is averted. Unfortunately while he is reconciling in the hall with his wife it all goes Noirsville when another express train telescopes into the train he stopped killing 30 people including the wife of Jerves the publisher, a private detective he hired (the mackintosh man) to follow his wife, and the publisher Jerves himself who was on the train. 

The Crash

The wreck

The car he was in

Susan's body

A police inspector (who was also on the train) turns up the next day and has a spot of tea at the North's house. He asks why John's name showed up several times in Susan Wilding's address / date book and the dead detective has a note book with the initials J N in it. 

Some nice twists unexpected ahead in this Noir.

Noirsville

Vida Hope as Miss Marchmont

Richard Todd, so far, has been great in every Brit Noir of his that I've seen. He sort of reminds me a bit of a more serious Robert Wagner. Valerie Hobson I've must have seen in Bride Of Frankenstein but she wasn't memorable enough for me to remember her without another looksee. The rest of the cast was all new to me with the exception of Vida Hope. I've seen her playing close to the same general type character in other Brit Noir. She is in proto noir The 39 Steps, and Brit Noirs/ I Became a Criminal, It Always Rains On Sunday, For Them That Trespass, and The Long Memory. 

It's sort of a Brit Woman In The Window. 7/10.

This story is loosely based on train wreck near Winsford in Cheshire. 

On 17 April 1948, 24 people died when the 17:40 Glasgow to London Euston train hauled by LMS Princess Royal Class 4-6-2 No 6207 Princess Arthur of Connaught was stopped after the communication cord was pulled by a passenger (a soldier on leave who presumably lived near Winsford and was seen to leave the train after it had stopped).The stopped train was then run into by a following postal express hauled by LMS Coronation Class 4-6-2 No 6251 City of Nottingham.

The collision happened at between 40 and 45 mph (64 and 72 km/h) and was so severe that only five of the ten passenger coaches could be pulled away on their wheels and only the rear eight of the 13 Postal coaches could be pulled back. 24 passengers were killed. The signalman at Winsford had, in error, reported the passenger train clear of the section and accepted the postal train.

The person who pulled the emergency cord was a railway employee who worked as a signal box lad in Winsford Junction, but was currently serving in the army having been called up. He thought that the train would be perfectly safe because he knew how the signaling equipment of the time in that area worked; but he did not know that the train had stopped short of the track circuit, which would have reminded the signalman of its presence. He attended the enquiry to confess, and was still a signalman in Winsford Junction until he retired in the 1990s. (Wiki)