LGM Film Club, Part 547: Green For Danger

Green for Danger is a 1946 film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Trevor Howard, Alastair Sim, and a solid cast of mid-century British actors. The film itself is really in two halves. It takes place in a rural hospital during the war. The Germans are bombing, a constant problem. A bomb falls near the hospital and its postman gets hit. He has a broken leg, not a huge deal really. But when they go to operate, he collapses and dies under anaesthesia. Huh, is the general idea. But then one of the nurses dies, stabbed, after a series of revelations about the relationships between the doctors and nurses. Then the second half starts, when Sim comes as the somewhat bumbling investigator from Scotland Yard, who knows one of the cast members murdered both of these people. But which one? Ooo…mystery!

Here, it starts to get pretty silly. Sim’s questioning is so ridiculous and over the top that you begin to sympathize with Trevor Howard and Leo Genn’s characters thinking this is totally inappropriate, even if they are angry that anyone could possibly think it was them who killed these people. So the second half isn’t super great, it comes to a conclusion that is reasonable enough I suppose, but it’s really a second rate British film of the period. I’ll watch anything with Trevor Howard though.

Whole thing is available on YouTube, so have at it.