This virtually unknown little gem was recently picked by my friend Alex Ramon as one of his ten best films in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made. While I wouldn't go that far it's certainly extraordinary and hopefully, thanks to Alex, a film well worth discovering.
"The Halfway House" of the title is a place not dissimilar in cinema to many other houses in which a group of people find themselves trapped, metaphorically or literally, in what we might describe as a loose genre that stretches from "The Old Dark House" through "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" all the way to some of the home invasion movies of today.
Set during the closing years of the Second World War, the people here are a sundry bunch who arrive at an Inn in the Welsh countryside but it's an Inn that really shouldn't exist, having been destroyed by a bomb the previous year. Their hosts are Mervyn Johns, (always good in a ghost story, for indeed this is what it is), and his real-life daughter Glynis Johns, and all of them have problems that need sorting out.
It's clear from quite early on that this will indeed be a ghost story of sorts. It's also an Ealing comedy and a piece of wartime propaganda, (Ireland's neutrality and possible 'friendship' with Germany is touched on and how many war films of the period would think of that angle). You might even say it's an anti-war film since the futility of war is also a theme.
Very loosely adapted by Angus MacPhail and Diana Morgan from the play "The Peaceful Inn" by Denis Ogden it's also beautifully acted by its ensemble cast with Francoise Rosay, Esmond Knight, Alfred Drayton and Tom Walls the standouts. Basil Dearden was the director though Alberto Cavalcanti also had his hand in it and it's not only one of Dearden's most neglected films but also one of his best. Perhaps not top ten material, then, but one for the ages nevertheless.
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