This early British talkie is notable for the number of future star-names, most of them not well-established at the time - a galaxy of major talents, whom the film would undoubtedly have helped to promote. Ralph Richardson, Max Miller and Sonnie Hale, all at the dawn of their movie careers. Rare sightings of Ursula Jeans and Martita Hunt when young. And Jessie Matthews at the top of her form, even though she doesn't get to sing.
It is not quite clear why the ending (a bus-crash in the rain) has to be given away at the beginning, unless they were trying to reference Thornton Wilder's 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey', a recent best-seller already filmed by this time, where a fatal accident links together the lives of a group of total strangers. But this does not weaken the suspense, as we take up the thread of each of the sub-plots, one scene at a time. For me, it was Edmund Gwenn, desperately trying to follow-up a stock-market tip, that kept me on the edge of my seat. But there are plenty of other interesting cameos from the various social strata of pre-war London, from dodgy market-traders to smoothie con-men.
The casting also reflected a real-life drama, where Jessie Matthews had been vilified as a husband-stealer in the divorce court for luring Sonnie Hale away from his first wife (Evelyn Laye), whose soon-to-be second husband Frank Lawton is also in the present line-up.
On the whole, the film has not dated badly at all. There is only a little of that 'Shepperton cockney' that would later bulk-up embarrassingly, right into the 50's. And the opening shot of Big Ben chiming the hour had not become a cliché as early as this. Finally, the version I watched is seven minutes shorter than the original, so I may have missed out on a few other masterly contributions by screenwriter Sidney Gilliat.
It is not quite clear why the ending (a bus-crash in the rain) has to be given away at the beginning, unless they were trying to reference Thornton Wilder's 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey', a recent best-seller already filmed by this time, where a fatal accident links together the lives of a group of total strangers. But this does not weaken the suspense, as we take up the thread of each of the sub-plots, one scene at a time. For me, it was Edmund Gwenn, desperately trying to follow-up a stock-market tip, that kept me on the edge of my seat. But there are plenty of other interesting cameos from the various social strata of pre-war London, from dodgy market-traders to smoothie con-men.
The casting also reflected a real-life drama, where Jessie Matthews had been vilified as a husband-stealer in the divorce court for luring Sonnie Hale away from his first wife (Evelyn Laye), whose soon-to-be second husband Frank Lawton is also in the present line-up.
On the whole, the film has not dated badly at all. There is only a little of that 'Shepperton cockney' that would later bulk-up embarrassingly, right into the 50's. And the opening shot of Big Ben chiming the hour had not become a cliché as early as this. Finally, the version I watched is seven minutes shorter than the original, so I may have missed out on a few other masterly contributions by screenwriter Sidney Gilliat.