Stolen Hours

Chet Baker, behind blackest shades, blows his horn in a Home Counties mansion, where Susan Hayward jives with old super-stooge Jerry Desmonde. Other memorable incongruities include a full-blown Hayward tirade in the middle of Portobello Road and her epiphany in a Cornish village, following victory in the egg-and-spoon race. This is the pre-war Bette Davis weepie Dark Victory, altered round the edges but with the same hook: a year to live, snatched happiness, all that. Petrie tries sternly to keep campiness at bay, but the whole enterprise is as doomed as its heroine. Slightly cherishable, though, thanks to Hayward's lightning flashes of temperament and her touchingly unconvincing simulation of vulnerability.