The Inheritance

I know now why actors in "Eastenders" suddenly appear through kitchen doors in their silly "soaps"; they were doing it back in 1950 in silly melodramas such as this, when characters suddenly appear mysteriously in the room.This type of Gainsborough melodrama had run its course by 1950 as more sophisticated screenplays had begun to replace them at the cinema.Single and married women whose husbands & boyfriends were in the armed forces during the war were now expecting a higher class of film when they went to the cinema.

Jean Kent plays the female lead in "The Reluctant Widow"/"The Inheritance" playing at first a governess who gets sidetracked into another house becoming the wife of a husband on his deathbed.If that was not far fetched, the plot becomes more farcical and melodramatic with every scene.The action takes place in the regency of George IV and the Duke of Wellington.It becomes very confusing and involves spying, selling government secrets to Napoleonic France.Guy Rolfe is formally defrocked on military parade but redeems himself in the end with the military hierarchy.Jean Kent is passed around snogging many of the male characters while Noel Howlett, (the headmaster in the t.v. production of "Please Sir"), has to perform the marriage service again to a bridegroom who is supposedly dieing in bed.Kathleen Byron makes a brief appearance as a French female accomplice.I gave it only 5/10.