London Belongs To Me

A shabby London lodging-house has the usual assortment of oddballs, including Alastair Sim - that staple of eccentricity - as a phony medium. Most particularly, there is garage-hand Attenborough, who lives with his mum (Henson). For a while, the picture looks like out-takes from This Happy Breed, but it swerves into thrillerdom, and then into something else again when Attenborough steals a car and his former girlfriend is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Attenborough is sentenced to hang for murder, and his fellow-lodgers march to Whitehall demanding a reprieve. Gilliat handles the thematic lurching very ably, even if it does look like a filmed play, and Attenborough's performance uses the left-over menace and panic of Brighton Rock. (From a novel by Norman Collins.) ATu.