Nonureva Really Surprised!

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

James Hitchcock "An Inspector Calls" is a socialist parable thinly disguised as a detective thriller. One evening in 1912, Arthur Birling, a wealthy industrialist and former Lord Mayor of a large provincial city, is hosting a dinner party to celebrate the engagement of his daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft, the son of another upper class family from the same city. The party is interrupted by the arrival of a police Inspector who states that he is investigating the death of a girl named Eva Smith who once worked in Birling's factory. None of the family is suspected of murder; the death was clearly suicide. Under the Inspector's questioning, however, it is revealed that each member of the family was in some way linked to her death in that it was their mistreatment of Eva which helped driver her to kill herself.Arthur dismissed Eva from his employment for asking for higher wages. Sheila, who had taken a dislike to her, engineered her dismissal from another job as a shop assistant. Gerald kept Eva for a time as his mistress and she was also for a time the lover of Arthur's son Eric, who got her pregnant. When, in desperation, Eva appealed for assistance to a local charity, she was turned down by a committee chaired by Arthur's wife Sybil.The film is of course based upon the well-known play by J.B. Priestley. Whenever stage plays are adapted for the screen it is common practice to alter the playwright's original text by what has become known as "opening up", using a much greater variety of locations than would be practicable in the theatre and showing us characters and events which are referred to but never seen on stage. In the fifties, not all films were "opened up" for the screen, but this was done with "An Inspector Calls". Although in other plays, such as "Time and the Conways", Priestley enjoyed playing tricks with time, in this one he observes the Classical Unities of place, time and action, the whole action taking place in the Birlings' dining-room over the course of a single evening. Eva Smith is often referred to, but never seen. In the screen version, however, we see the whole of Eva's story and her relationships with the various members of the family, told in a series of flashbacks.There are, however, occasions when "opening up" might with greater accuracy be called "closing down", and this film is an example of what I mean. In both play and film the Inspector (known as Inspector Poole here, Inspector Goole in the play) is a mysterious figure. Priestley leaves it deliberately ambiguous as to whether he is a genuine police Inspector, an impostor, a symbolic personification of justice or conscience or a supernatural figure. (The name "Goole", pronounced "ghoul", may hint at this last possibility).Something else left ambiguous is whether "Eva Smith" is one person or several. It would, after all, be a remarkable coincidence if every member of the family, quite unknown to one another, had had dealings with the same woman. In the play the possibility is left open that Goole may have misled the family into believing that they had all known the same person, whereas there may be as many as four women involved- the real Eva Smith who was sacked from Birling's factory, the unnamed shop girl, Gerald's mistress who goes by the name Daisy Renton and Eric's lover, also unnamed, who later asks the charity for help. This is an interpretation which has been favoured by some commentators on the play; Priestley's main purpose was not to construct an Agatha Christie style "whodunit" but to emphasise the various ways, both economic and sexual, in which the upper classes took advantage of those whom they saw as their social inferiors. In the film, however, where Eva actually appears and is played by one actress, Jane Wenham, this interpretation is effectively "closed down", and in my view this rather detracts from the richness and complexity of Priestley's play.Despite this, "An Inspector Calls" is a pretty good film. On the acting side, Wenham was rather too genteel for the working-class Eva and I felt that Eileen Moore was perhaps too attractive as Sheila; it is suggested that Sheila was partially motivated by jealousy of Eva's looks, and the stunning Eileen does not look like a girl who would need to be jealous of anyone. With those exceptions, however, all the actors are very good, and Alastair Sim as Poole is something more than good. The play was also filmed for British television in 1982 with Bernard Hepton as Goole. In that production, Hepton played the Inspector as a rather harsh, abrasive character, perhaps more in line with the way Priestley described him. Here Sim makes him much more smooth, persuasive and insinuating- yet makes us believe that this is just as valid an interpretation of the role.Despite Priestley's left-wing views, he was regarded with some suspicion by the "Angry Young Men" of the fifties, who saw plays like "An Inspector Calls" as the sort of drawing-room drama they were reacting against. The "Angries" preferred to depict working-class life via the medium of social-realist drama rather than discuss working-class problems from the perspective of middle-class metaphor. this may have influenced the decision to show Eva in the film; the only working-class character in the play is the maid, who plays a minor role. Ironically Priestley was to remain a socialist throughout his long life, unlike some of the "Angries" such as John Osborne, who were to move sharply to the right, and although not all of his work is well-remembered today, "An Inspector Calls" has been rediscovered as a classic of the British theatre, particularly since Stephen Daldry's famous 1992 production. This film helps show us how it was interpreted by an earlier generation. 8/10

Charlot47 Eschatology is the study of the four last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. After a death there must be judgement and this will lead to either bliss or damnation. In this film the ghostly Inspector, marvellously played by Alastair Sim, forces a family to face the reality of death, to accept judgement and to choose whether they will repent or stay obdurate. Set in the microcosm of a well-off English household in 1912, the message applies equally to their class and to the nation which they control. When a single working-class woman undergoes what Eva went through, the society which produces it needs reform. No simple solution is given, however. Instead, the story mutely asks us to decide who is my brother and how far am I his keeper.Adapted for the screen by Desmond Davis from the stage play by J.B. Priestley, the film opens out the claustrophobic tale by showing Eva's sad descent in a series of flashbacks, which allow the use of more settings and more characters (including a cameo for George Cole as a tram conductor). Making Eva a neat, quiet, unassuming young woman adds greatly to the pathos, evoking our pity for her fate. Good playing by a young Bryan Forbes, who later switched to directing, as the weak son Eric.

Spikeopath A toff English family dinner is interrupted by the appearance of Inspector Poole, he announces that a young lady has committed suicide by the ingestion of disinfectant. At first the family is oblivious as to why this concerns them, but as Poole interviews each family member, it's apparent that one thing binds them all to the mystery.Adapted from the J.B. Priestley stage play, An Inspector Calls is everything that was great about 50s British Cinema. Simple in structure it may be, but the lack of clogging in any form shines brighter than many a lavish production from this particular decade. The films cause is helped immensely by the quality of the writing, Desmond Davis adding further quality to the already great source provided by the talented Priestley. At first the film leads you to believe that it's going to be a one room interrogation piece, but thru a series of flash backs we are taken out of the room to follow this intriguing story to its quite brilliant finale. There are no histrionics from the actors in this piece, all of them are wonderful because they adhere to the necessity of letting the story be the star. Alastair Sim is perfectly cast as Inspector Poole, a large presence with those highly sympathetic eyes, Sim may be playing the main character, yet he's playing second fiddle to the fleshing out of the Birling family deconstruction, it's a wonderful case where the acting glue is holding it all together.Director Guy Hamilton does a smashing job of making the film permanently edgy, a sense of unease is palpable throughout, and it's only during the final reel that the heart of the film shows its ace card, and even then, the makers have one more trick up their sleeves. Also worth mentioning is the editing from the sadly uncredited Geoffrey Botterill, so many films containing flash back sequences feel intrusive to the flow of a picture, it isn't here, it's spot on. An Inspector Calls is a wonderful mystery piece that is dotted with moments of unease, but all this would go to waste if the pay off was merely a damp squib, it thankfully isn't, and the likes of Rod Serling and Charles Beaumont were surely nodding in approval.Highly recommended 9/10.*Footnote:Alastair Sim is listed on this site as playing Inspector Goole, that is the characters name in the Priestley play, but i can assure everyone that his characters name is definitely Inspector Poole for this film version.

fuhgeddaboutit01 JB Priestley usually had a moralising theme to his plays.As a Socialist he wanted to show his audience the social ills in society and prick their conscience.This film, which my son studied for his English GCSE was made into a film in 1954 with Alistair Sim in the title role.To help my son get a better understanding we all went up to the West End to see the play acted by professionals.It has a haunting theme about the social ills in the Edwardian society of 1912 when a girl first loses her job at the factory when asking for higher wages by the father, loses her second job courtesy of the daughter, loses her flat courtesy of the daughter's fiancé, is made pregnant by the son and finally is refused genuine charity by the mother.My son returned the favour by giving me a DVD version of the film when I expressed a wish to see it, since one sees so few worthy films on TV these days compared to all the modern rubbish shown.There is rather a ghostly denouement to the film and twist which Priestley cleverly writes into the plot.Although Alistair Sim is only on screen for a short time he effortlessly steals your attention.