Green for Danger - Criterion Collection (1947)

Tragically Overlooked Gray and Campbell

I always hate movies that open up with all of the cast introduced one by one wearing surgical masks. But here, it works better than in its rivals, because of the suspense factor involved. When Alistair Sim's narrating character, Inspector Cockrill, tells us that two of these people will soon be dead, and a third a murderer, naturally we get curious. Yes, it is a bit of a stretch distinguishing between the four female characters, and in fact I think the screenwriters actually forgot to do much about one of them (or else some scenes hit the cutting room floor), but they are played by some tragically overlooked stars of England, so I enjoy myself just working out who is who. When Freddie can't make up her mind between Trevor Howard, to whom she is engaged, or Leo Genn, the little Mike Myers lookalike who's supposedly a brilliant surgeon here, she's hard to sympathize with, and in fact she seems a bit of a tart.

She is played by the brilliant Sally Gray, whose own personal life was more dramatic than any two or three of her movies. She was an up and coming starlet in the early 40s when a nervous collapse took her off the screen for four or five years. GREEN FOR DANGER was only her third film after her dramatic comeback, and audiences would have been scrutinizing "Freddie" carefully, the way they did Gene Tierney in ADVISE AND CONSENT, for any lingering signs of instability. It's still hard to understand how she got insured. Gray seemed to want to travel deeper into neurosis after her cure, and of course the British cinema likewise had grown darker and more crime-driven. Then we have Judy Campbell as Sister Bates, the tall actress with the Kay Francis look. Campbell's films are few, she only made ten, but she is well known for her creative partnership with Noel Coward, for her introduction of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," and for being the mother of the only and only Jane Birkin! Little of Campbell's chic or cheer shows through the anguish of her characterization of the abandoned mistress here, but she certainly commands attention when she runs around the nurses and doctors dance crying to all and sundry that she has figured out the murder.

That bit is one of the screenplay's occasional clunkers. Like the end when Cockrill asks all the suspects to re-enact the crime, using Freddie as bait. The plot needs these things to happen, but Sidney Gilliatt's direction fails to disguise how convenient and unbelievable these developments are.

Sally Gray was to re-team with Christianna Brand (the author of the novel GREEN FOR DANGER and one of the certified Golden Age detective writers) on another film, the little seen THE MARK OF CAIN, directed by the fascinating Brian Desmond Hurst, that Criterion should release next. October 1, 2008

Stiff Upper Lips

If you like the older English films where the main character displays almost no emotion--the classic 'stiff upper lip'--then you'll love this one. When one suspect in his murder investigation is killed, Scotland Yard's Inspector Cockrill keeps his cool, regarding it as if it were some unfortunate bit of happenstance, rather than an act of horror. It's easy to see why a nation that idealized that sort of behavior stood up to everything Hitler could throw at them including, in the film, the V1 buzz bombs.

Extreme as that may be, I prefer it to many contemporary English murder mysteries (seen on PBS), where the detective's own life seems so torn by personal troubles that any focus on the crime is lost. It's easy to wonder if today's England, fragmented and individualistic, could stand against a similar foe. In today's England, the upper lip is always quivering.

--Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings August 23, 2008

Green for Great!

Top British cast - Trevor Howard, Leo Genn, the beautiful Sally Grey and the outstanding Alistair Simm. A very nice balance of soap operatic doctor shenanigans, wonderful sets, character study, police investigations, humor and on top of all this - a who-dun-it worthy of Agatha Christi. British film making at its finest. Superb picture-perfect restoration by Criterion makes Green For Danger - "Green for Great." March 9, 2008

The English Murder Mystery With A Capital "E"

You just don't get much more English than this clever murder mystery from the popular novel by Christianna Brand.

Postman Joseph Higgins (Moore Mariott) is knocked flat by a German buzz bomb during the height of World War II and finds himself scheduled for surgery at local hospital. It should be a simple operation, but something goes wrong even before the first incision is made, and Higgins is suddenly dead on the table. Sister Bates (Judy Campbell) announces, under the least inauspicious circumstances imaginable, that it was murder----and before you can say "Scotland Yard" Inspector Cockrill (Alistar Sim) is on the case.

Brand's novel is famous for its use of the hospital and operating room as settings, and at the time the plot was considered quite a twister too. The latter may no longer be case, but the setting holds up extremely well in this film adaptation, largely thanks to a host of memorable performances, sold work from director Sidney Gilliat, and atmospheric cinematography by Wilkie Cooper. The script, co-written by Gilliat and Claude Guerney, is a bit talky, but the cast works wonders with it, and the film will hold you attention to the end.

The Criterion DVD includes an interesting if somewhat too academic audio commentary and bonus feature; the transfer, however, is excellent, very crisp. Strongly recommended for fans of the classic English murder mystery.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer December 7, 2007

Ever Green

Great atmospheric whodunit that can be watched repeatedly even when one knows the ending. Informed, if slightly soporific extras, but with the picture quality this pristine you wont care. October 28, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...