kidboots
No one could portray the ordinary man plunged into extraordinary circumstances quite like Ralph Richardson. This movie may not appear on any best movie lists but believe me, every performer contributes to make this a gem. The whimsical opening, the tinkling music, Ralph Richardson's fussy little suburban 9 to 5 office worker masks it's genre - I initially thought it was a comedy but within minutes you are thrown into the dramatic world of amnesia. David Preston is always home at seven but tonight his hysterical wife falls into his arms, Richardson lulling the viewer into a false sense of security just by his look of disbelief. Janet is frantic - she hadn't seen him since he left for work - the day before!! She has already called the police and consulted their concerned Dr. Sparling (Jack Hawkins) who, when he examines David finds he really has no idea about the last lost day. Jack Hawkins is just terrific - he just never doubts David's story and looks at things in a logical manner. Into this mix comes darker elements, David's neighbour, an old colonel pops over to inquire if David has the treasury funds that one of the other club members saw him holding last night. This shadowy, mysterious member (who David has developed a real hatred for) has lost no time in hurrying to the neighbour's house to inform on him. A short time later the man's body is found on some waste ground...but where is the money???So many tantalizing tit bits so beloved by British "little" movies turn up. When Janet rings up David's work she is informed that his working day finishes at 5 - not 6, so where does he go for that hour (a perfectly innocent reason). Then when things get grim and a solicitor is called in, Janet has to confess that in reality they are poor - David has been paying back money over the years that his father absconded with. Margaret Leighton matches Richardson in intensity and emotion. From her first appearance she is keyed up to fever pitch and her quavering edginess never leaves her. She is brilliant.Among the memorable scenes - the one where David reveals his true feelings about the mystery member, Richardson has you believing that's the way he really feels - to listen to his emotion was really unsettling. Another, when David realises that he may soon face prison, he tries to organise his business affairs in a calm and rational manner, all the while Janet's nerves are being strung to breaking point and then they plan to spend the evening at the pictures!!Such a tribute to Richardson's acting, he never drops his character for a moment - even at the very end when everything has been settled, you know he doesn't really understand what has happened and will always be wondering about that missing day!!Just brilliant!
robert-temple-1
This is certainly one of the most accurate portrayals on film of what psychologists call a 'fugue state', which is a dissociative disorder of human consciousness caused by a mental trauma. In this story, a perfectly ordinary bank executive played by Ralph Richardson experiences amnesia for a 24-hour period of his life, with disastrous consequences. Every evening, after leaving his job in the City of London, Richardson takes the train from Cannon Street Station and arrives home in the suburbs at seven. One Tuesday, he arrives home at seven to find his wife, played brilliantly by Margaret Leighton, in a terrible state of anxiety bordering on hysteria. She asks him where he has been, why he did not come home the night before, why was he not at work at the bank all day, and she informs him that she called the police and reported him missing. He is incredulous and says that she is talking nonsense, that here he is precisely at seven as always, and it is Monday, not Tuesday. But she shows him the newspaper and proves that it is really Tuesday. Thus the story begins, and everything becomes increasingly desperate and harrowing from there on. This is the first and only film directed by Ralph Richardson, and he has done a superb job of it. He received expert support from cameramen Jack Hildyard and Ted Scaife, with camera operator Denys Coop, and Assistant Director Guy Hamilton, all of whom later became famous. Although the film is not showy and does not have dramatic lighting and editing, the emphasis is on the story and the actors, which creates a considerable intensity, as the performances are all so good. The doctor who attempts to sort out Richardson's 'missing day' is expertly played by Jack Hawkins, who was always one of the most reliable as well as agreeable of British actors, whether as a lead or in a supporting role, as here. The reason why this film is so convincing and so accurate in its portrayal of this psychological condition is that it is based upon a play by R. C. Sheriff. Sheriff is chiefly famous for his play JOURNEY'S END, which was filmed in 1930 and subsequently three more times. It is a gripping film about the trenches of the First World War, based on Sheriff's own Army experiences prior to his being invalided out after the Battle of Ypres. (It is a superb film. I taped it off the air years ago but gave my tape to John Mills, who asked me for it because he wanted to see it again, as he had been touring in that play as a young man when he met his wife in Shanghai because she and her father Colonel Hayley Bell attended a performance, and it was love at first sight. He thus considered that in a way he owed his happy marriage to R. C. Sheriff.) Sheriff had a direct and personal experience of such matters as shell shock and the fugue states caused by battle trauma, which he put to good use in HOME AT SEVEN, since the explanation of Richardson's fugue state is eventually found to be because he heard a sound like a gunshot, which snapped him into a dissociative state where he imagined he was again under attack in the War. The story was filmed again for television by the BBC five years later, in 1957, with Peter Cushing in the lead. Sheriff's expertise at writing convincing stories about strange mental states was shown in the film THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP (1955). That is a film I know a great deal about indeed, as it is based upon a real paranormal experience of my close friend Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard (who made a speech at my wedding), with whom I discussed both the experience and the film on many occasions. Sir Victor believed Sheriff had done a very good job of portraying his story in dramatic form, and that was Sheriff's great strength. He also wrote the famous ODD MAN OUT (1947) with James Mason, and he adapted the two excellent Somerset Maugham story compilation films, QUARTET (1948) and TRIO (1950). And of course he did the screenplays for the classics THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933), GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1939), and THE DAM BUSTERS (1955). He really was a giant of British stage and screen, and deserves to be better remembered. He died in 1975. This film does a first rate job of putting the story across, in a state of high anxiety and suspense. It turns out that for all the years of his marriage, Richardson had been telling a little white lie to his wife by saying he left work at 6, whereas he really left work at 5 and stopped off in the back room of a pub run by friends (as pubs only opened at 6) for a friendly and very tame sherry, and a game of darts. He didn't care to tell his wife lest he offend her, as she 'disapproved of alcoholic drinks'. This is Richardson's one guilty secret, surely the tamest one ever featuring as a major plot element in a suspense film! But because of it, no one can figure out where Richardson was for his 24 lost hours, and he is wrongly suspected of theft and murder. This film should be shown to psychology students at universities. I have made a considerable study of dissociative psychological states, and I can assure everyone that every detail of this film is accurate, clearly because it is based upon a real case or cases known to Sheriff, and possibly even others known to Richardson, thus perhaps explaining Richardson's strange enthusiasm for the story. It is always better when films about psychological cases such as amnesia and dissociation of personality are based upon facts, for then they are convincing and effective, as this is.
Mishnish
Most appetising piece of oh-so British whimsey, predicated upon the premise that we English must never, ever lose control. As it is then, that chaos is come again.Old Ralphie (well I remember his performances at awards ceremonies: "...thus affording the winner to paddle in a puddle of pride") casts himself (he directed this!) as the ever so staid English civil servant who finds himself in a most unusual predicament after the onset of a memory block, not, I might add, precipitated by a surfeit of alcohol, but by a ...well, I forget myself.Anyway, the fact that a portion of the action takes place in a licensed premise notwithstanding, Ralphie manfully weathers this personal maelstrom and emerges a jolly good fellow (as if we ever doubted it) and all round tophole egg.
