Executscan Expected more

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

robert-temple-1 The American actor Robert Preston (who because of his accent was excused in the story as someone who grew up Canada) stars in this British film which has a genuine noir story and atmosphere, similar to the Americans noirs of the time. It was written jointly by ex-spook Leo Marks and the director, Francis Searle. The next year, 1952, Searle is said to have directed a 30-minute film entitled BULLDOG DRUMMOND, starring Robert Beatty as Drummond. IMDb records no further information about it, and there is no record of its having been released or transmitted. This situation is a strange one, because Robert Beatty starred as Bulldog Drummond five years later in a 30-minute film entitled BULLDOG DRUMMOND AND THE LUDLOW AFFAIR (1957, see my review) directed by David MacDonald. (It was the 22nd of the 25 Drummond films, if one disregards the Searle film.) That 1957 film, which I have seen and reviewed, was a poor TV pilot film. Could the two 30 minute films have been confused with one another perhaps? Or could the 1952 attempt by Searle have been recut for the Rheingold Theatre series by the TV series director David MacDonald (who retired in 1963) and Searle's name taken off? This latter suggestion seems the most likely to me. In other words, the original would have failed as a pilot so that no Drummond series was commissioned, but the pilot was disguised as something new and stuck into another series as a one-off. The coincidence of the same duration and the same star and the same decade are too much. But that is enough about Searle. Returning to this film, it is very good and has an air of authenticity about it. Preston's wife is played by the weird Elizabeth Sellars, who speaks in a semi-articulate and languid manner as if she were slurring her speech through a wall of medication. She is bizarre but fascinating to look at, in the way that an animal which was not quite true to type might be, if studied closely in a zoo, while scientists speculated about what had gone wrong with its DNA. However, the weirdness of Sellars works very well with the story, and in any case she is killed off early on, so that she cannot become too irritating. Sellars was not always as weird as this, for she appeared in 62 films and generally managed to do very well and appear quite normal. She was, for instance, excellent in THE CHALK GARDEN (1964, see my review). In this story, Preston is madly in love with her and the film turns into a revenge tale where he determines to avenge her death by a hit-and-run driver. Her death is particularly poignant in that, the horrors of the War being finally behind them (the story is set in 1946), she is looking at a field which Preston wants to buy as part of their happy future. And then she is without warning run over by two criminals escaping a crime scene at speed. So what could be more noirish than that? The despair of the War, having been lifted momentarily, then turns into a lasting doom. This was why noir was noir. And it is rare to find the essence of noir so well expressed in a British film, as the English being far more stoical than the Americans (the makers of most noir), they tended to express their angst with less fervour and gloom, as they were so much more used to everything going wrong anyway, including their nearest and dearest being suddenly killed without warning in the bombing of London. This film is a notable addition to the list of good British films of the early fifties.

blanche-2 Robert Preston had an interesting career. He started out as a movie actor, a star but not a big one, and drifted into television in its early days. Always a presence on Broadway, he achieved superstardom for his portrayal of Harold Hill in The Music Man, and went on to do the movie as well as other big films and Broadway shows, including originating the role of Henry II in The Lion in Winter.Here, he stars in a Hammer film from 1952, Cloudburst, based on a play by Leo Marks. Preston plays John Graham, a cryptographer and someone who worked in the Resistance. His wife Carol is played by Elizabeth Sellars. The two are very much in love, and she saved John's life during the war while, under torture, refusing to talk. They are expecting their first child.As a result of her experience with the Gestapo, Carol has a marked limp, and she falls in the road. A car runs her over and doesn't stop. The driver is a murder suspect trying to get out of town. Graham decides to get revenge and formulates a plan.There's nothing unusual about the story, except in this case, the story focuses in on the character of Graham, his calmness and determination while facing that he has lost everything and cares about nothing but revenge on the driver and his passenger, a woman who told him to keep driving.Colin Tapley plays Inspector Davi, and he does an excellent job.Worth seeing I think for Preston.The author, Leo Marks, kind of a film Forrest Gump. was a cryptographer during the war and gave the poem The Life that I Have to spy Violette Szabo to use as a code. Her story was made into a film in 1958 called "Carve Her Name is Pride," a beautiful film. After leaving cryptography, Marks began to write movies and plays, most notably the film Peeping Tom. His father owned the bookshop featured in 84 Charing Cross Road, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.

MartinHafer The story in "Cloudburst" is not particularly believable...but that can also be said about MANY movies. However, the film has many unique story elements--and that's something that makes it worth seeing.This British film stars Robert Preston as a Canadian living in the UK. He and his wife are happily in love and life is looking up for them--until, out of the blue, she is fun over by a couple jerks who couldn't care less! Instead of giving the police a correct identification, the husband is determined to investigate the case on his own...and then kill the killers! What makes it really unusual is the savagery of his attacks. It's rather unflinching and brutal. Overall, the film is an interesting example of British film noir--and Preston was very good in the lead.

whitesheik I read the other two "reviews" here - the first written by someone who seems to have seen a different film than the one actually in front of his eyes, and the other by someone who doesn't really get one of the major plot points. But, this is the IMDb so what else is new.I'd never seen or heard of Cloudburst prior to the recent showing on TCM. It's quite a good little film - well directed by Searle, whose work I don't know at all, with a top-notch score by Frank Spencer, a composer I also don't know. Preston is very good, as are the rest of the players, especially the actor who plays the Inspector. The storytelling is compelling, and there's a surprising complexity in Preston's character. Leo Marks, from whose play this was taken, was a fascinating writer and person - as one of the others points out, he really did work as a decoder during the war - and this isn't the only film he wrote where the central character is a decoder - he also wrote Sebastian, in which Dirk Bogarde plays a decoder. And, of course, Marks gave us the brilliant script to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom.Worth catching if you can find it.