Time Without Pity

Cast: Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd, and Leo McKern

Director: Joseph Losey

85 minutes (PG) 1957

Powerhouse / Indicator

Blu-ray region B

[Released 28th October]

Rating: 8/10

Review by J.C. Hartley  

I was thinking I was unfamiliar with Michael Redgrave’s cinematic work beyond The Heroes Of Telemark (1965), and his part in Cavalcanti’s The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, the stand-out story in British portmanteau horror film Dead Of Night (1945). But of course, I’ve seen him in far more than that - The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Browning Version (1951), and The Importance Of Being Earnest (1952), to name a few. In Time Without Pity he plays washed-up novelist David Graham, an alcoholic recently released from a Canadian sanatorium, who has travelled to England in a forlorn attempt to save his son Alec (Alec McCowen) from the gallows, after the young man has been convicted of murdering his girlfriend. 

We know that Alec is innocent because, in a pre-credits sequence, we have seen the deed perpetrated by Robert Stanford (Leo McKern), motor-car magnate and father of Alec’s best friend Brian (Paul Daneman). The Stanfords have almost been surrogate parents to Alec, given his father’s problem with the bottle, but that relationship has led to a burgeoning intimacy between Alec and Stanford’s wife Honor (Ann Todd), as we are to discover. Despite the early reveal of the true killer, this is no episode of Columbo where a dogged investigator eventually entraps the murderer, rather with just 24 hours in which to save his son, Graham twitches and sweats, succumbs once again to the booze, and eventually sacrifices himself to implicate Stanford. 

The film is directed by Joseph Losey, and is the first of his British movies to carry his own name, after he had settled in the UK in 1953 following his black-listing in Hollywood.  Losey directed a trio of outstanding films in the UK when working with Harold Pinter as screenwriter: The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1967), as well as some bonkers camp ‘classics’ that I have a bit of affection for, such as Modesty Blaise (1966), and Boom! (1968). There are some neat stylistic touches in Time Without Pity which attest to Losey’s quality, a scene in a lift with Redgrave and Daneman which makes use of infinity mirrors, and a sequence where Redgrave follows McKern down a corridor, where the audience see McKern’s expression as Redgrave follows him a few yards behind.

This is a powerful British noir raised above the pedestrian through the quality of the performances and a strong supporting cast. Peter Cushing is Alec Graham’s lawyer, Joan Plowright is the murdered girlfriend’s sister, Lois Maxwell is another of Stanford’s mistresses, and Renee Houston plays her mother. McKern snarls and shouts and generally chews the scenery, but his character’s relationship with Graham senior hints at some deep psychological trouble, and it seems as if at any point he may confess to his crime. Redgrave is the standout turn, alternately aggressive or pleading, sucking on his squeezed sodden cigarettes, or juggling double whiskies as he almost abandons his quest for the truth.

There are a handful of extras on the disc. A 1973 John Player Lecture with Dilys Powell interviewing Losey, presented in audio but with the film playing over it for some reason.  An audio commentary to the movie by Neil Sinyard, Emeritus Professor of film studies at the University of Hull. Losey’s son Gavrik discusses his father’s work in ‘Sins Of The Father’, pointing out some Brechtian influences; Losey worked with Brecht, a relationship which counted against him in his dealings with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Also included is an advertising short that Losey made for a beverage known as Horlicks in 1960, this film Steven Turner introduced the eponymous character suffering from ‘night starvation’ in 30 seconds of noir imagery.