Synopsis:
Director Anthony Asquith, working in the style of a Hitchcock whodunit, deftly moves between multiple points of view in this gritty look at life in a seaport town. Jean Kent stars as Agnes "Astra"...
Director Anthony Asquith, working in the style of a Hitchcock whodunit, deftly moves between multiple points of view in this gritty look at life in a seaport town. Jean Kent stars as Agnes "Astra" Huston, a fortune teller at a run-down fair, who is found strangled in her bedroom. As the police question five suspects their interactions with her are shown in flashbacks from their highly suspect points of view.
Mrs. Finch (Hermione Baddeley), a nosy neighbor, glorifies herself as the bosom friend of the well mannered and dignified Mrs. Huston. She tells the police that Mrs. Huston had a husband, Charles, who was wounded in the war and died in a nearby hospital. Miss Catherine Smith (Susan Shaw), Agnes's sister informs the police that her sister was a vulgar lush who never loved her husband and only married him out of pity and further more, hoped that he'd be killed in the war so she could collect a war widow's pension. Bob Barker (Dirk Bogarde) says that Catherine hated her sister, and that after he spurned her advances she threatened to wreck his engagement to Catherine. Barker then threatened to strangle her, according to Mr. Potts, a kindly man from the pet shop across the street, who dotted on Agnes. He claims that on the night that she was murdered she agreed to marry him. But Agnes was also involved with an Irish sailor, Mike Murray (John McCallum), a big, poetic lunk with a violent temper, who saw her as lost soul in need of a soulmate and threatened her when she disagreed.
More in the style of THE LADY VANISHES than the dark and atmospheric American urban film noir of the time, the black and white photography is still impressive, and Jean Kent is very convincing in all five of her characterizations of Astra.
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