This is an odd little film of immediately post War Britain that grew on me the second time I watched it. The first time I was somewhat confused plus I simply couldn't understand the actors and their thick British accents when they spoke rapidly. The second time though, it grew on me. In spite of the fact that the viewer knows everything and it is the police who are trying to find out who the murderer is.
A woman is killed near a local fair, strangled, and apparently there have been several of these types of murders - all unsolved - over the last year or so. Scotland Yard is called in on the case. They beat a path to the actual murderer's door almost immediately, but they don't know that and the murderer is playing it cool. So much so that it is awhile into the film before the viewer knows that this guy is the murderer and not just some moody eccentric fellow with an exaggerated penchant for punctuality and that this is not going to be some kind of "wrong man" story. And it can't hurt that the murderer is from a respectable household and is a respectable businessman as far as giving the police pause.
So in this film the accent is on the inner turmoil of the murderer, apparently tormented by the knowledge that his grandfather was a hangman. This is the kind of weird slant on things that I saw in the silent film "Hangman's House" - insinuating that people who hang murderers who were convicted by somebody else and sentenced by somebody else are the actual murderers. Plus back in this time people still believed that genetics were destiny rather than possibility. As the murderer's inner conflict intensifies, the rather haunting score of the film becomes louder and more constant.
The second time watching it, I noticed that this film was most economically shot. You never even see the first victim of the film, and subsequent scenes are shot outside or in small rooms. No elaborate sets seem to have been built. This tends to make post war British films high quality in the acting and plot departments since apparently there was not lots of money for art design.
I'd recommend this one. Just don't get the idea that it is a police procedural or a noir because it really is neither of those.
