Absolutely love TP and the chance to revisit the old and largely forgotten films and TV shows it resurrects from the 50s, 60s and 70s – often ever earlier.
While attitudes have changed quite radically since then, the Watford-based station – pretty much a family affair ran by a dad and his daughter – goes to great pains to put a warning at the start of each film/show it runs. Annoyingly, the caveats re potentially offensive content and language don’t seem to be enough for the busy bodies at Ofcom.
Any particular treasures from the channel you’d like to recommend?
FWIW, while there was a thread a few years back (llink below) am sure the ranks of the ATM have swelled since 2018
I do fundamentally love TP, especially the “cottage industry” backstory, and still have it as my “default” station if I just want something on in the background while doing other things. However, as the years have gone on, the relative shallowness of their catalogue has become more apparent, and the vast majority of what they show has been repeated (by them) many-many times, and because so much programming is tied up with other corporate entities, I’d imagine they have a tough time licensing new programming at what I presume are bargain-basement budgets…
That said, I’ve really enjoyed the recent re-runs of Public Eye, Budgie and Hazell, and even Van Der Valk was better than I remembered at the time… they also have The Champions starting in a few weeks, with that fantastic Tony Hatch theme tune, and my forever crush Alexandra Bastedo… they also started a “Saturday Morning Pictures” slot last week which was good fun, though I suspect the novelty value of Flash Gordon might pall slightly as the weeks go on…
I’d also love them to lean more into the “cult” side of things, but it seems like The Man Who Fell To Earth and Nosferatu are still outliers for them… I’m still in their corner though!
The “cult” side of things, horror and comedy aside, tends to be American films – most of TP’s film content is British.
I’m optimistic because all the time stuff is falling out of copyright: the future’s in the past.
Public Eye! Brilliant! I have one series on DVD and I love the roads and even motorways with barely any traffic on them. Probably to reduce production costs (I don’t remember it being like that) but I love that glimpse into the past.
To the OP, I find this whole obliterate anything in the past you don’t agree with very troubling. If the principle concerned is sufficiently robust it ought to be able to withstand a few minutes of an ancient TV show on an obscure channel. I’m convinced some people jump out of bed looking for things to be outraged about.
There was a particular episode of Public Eye (one of the colour ones) which had an outdoor sequence done on video (as opposed to film, which was the more common practice back then), and it genuinely looked as if it could have been taken yesterday it was so vivid, quite uncanny…
This is a phenomenon I have noticed too. Back in “the day” many pop videos seemed to be of a higher picture quality, which is why some of them were so astonishing to watch at the time. Example – Duran Duran, Rio.
Look at the same ones on YouTube now and it’s like they’re filmed on Super 8.
Someone here will be able to give a better technical explanation I’m sure, but I believe a lot of those (formerly) impressive pop videos were shot on film, but then telecine-ed to video, and edited on early computerised editing suites, which led to a degradation in image as multi-generation images were put together… you see the same thing in US sitcoms of the time like Soap and Golden Girls, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had to be re-edited from the original elements (at huge expense) with re-done SFX to be suitable for blu-ray release… a smaller example is the 4K version of the Last Christmas video done a few years ago, re-edited from scratch from the original footage, which looks incredible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=E8gmARGvPlII
There’s also the difference between the “look” of film compared to video. Film is a chemical process, but has a specific look we’ve grown used to over time, and which we tend to equate with “quality”. Video is an electronic process, so mimics far closer how human beings actually see. Whilst that means we can perceive it as “cheap”, it’s also far more immediate and less prone to aging… high-quality video footage being shot now will look the same in a hundred years (for better or worse!)
Hello, I’m here with my ex-telecine designer hat on. Yes, you’re right – digital video processing didn’t really exist until the mid-90s, and even then it was too slow to use as the computers didn’t have sufficient grunt.
A telecine is, in effect, a light beam shining through the film stock and a TV camera pointing at it. Mess around with the light beam and you get FX.
Nearly all the arty stuff in pop videos was done with either filters over the camera lens, or in the telecine transfer. I worked on a Robbie Williams video during the “Blobby Williams” years. By underscanning, we got him to look tall and thin, but everyone else looked skeletal and like they were playing short-neck guitars.
Adverts are still made on film as, like you say, we’ve become accustomed to seeing film as quality. Peter Jackson must be well pleased that Let It Be was shot on film stock as early video was awful.
I worked on a TV film at Shepperton in 1999. I had a big heavy projector and a Betacam player, projecting footage of traffic on the North Circular Road onto a window. After a couple of takes, they asked if I could stop the projector moving. It turned out they had shot the footage on 16mm film and telecined it to video and the image movement was caused by the less than perfect alignment of the film’s sprocket holes as it passed through the projector during the telecine process.
Ah, ‘Frame Bounce’. That takes me back.
The engineering of telecines is really interesting. I only lasted about 3 years there, largely because I didn’t own a TV at the time. I did do some blue-screen work on a James Bond film, though.
This was a side to side movement. Do you mean a sort of jumping over occasional frames due to the sprocket holes being misaligned? I had that on a Transvision Vamp video shoot where the edits had been done without a splicing block. I was only about 23 at the time and we were constantly dropped in the shit and left to sort it out as best we could.
Yeah, Frame Bounce is when the image would creep up the screen, usually a line at a time, then crash back down again as it realigned itself. It made everything look like it had been shot by the Lumiére brothers.
I love Talking Pictures and I missed that thread in 2018!
They showed Witchfinder General recently and it was the first time I had seen it.
That’s a shame that Ofcom have them in their sights. Hopefully it will just be a matter of negotiation about how much of a warning they need to provide for outdated and offensive content (a banner across the bottom of the screen?) but I hope it doesn’t cause them to have to pull significant amounts of content.
Has Bottoms Up ever been on TPTV? This, er, comedy from 1960 stars Jimmy Edwards as the dodgy moustachioed head of Chiselbury School, with the wonderful Arthur Howard as his long-suffering deputy, Pettigrew. Its comedy, such as it is, relies on two plot lines that would be bound to raise hackles at Ofcom these days: thrashing small boys, or the threat of it at least, and Frazer Hines blacking up as the fake son of a fake sheik. The script is by Muir and Nordern, and it’s not one of their better efforts, shall we say. It’s main interest lies in the fact that one of the boys, young Wendover (‘bend over, Wendover’) is played by a certain John Mitchell, who grew up to thump the tubs behind Jimi Hendrix. Nicely spoken lad, too.
It’s so unspeakably bad that in the greater scheme of things it wouldn’t matter much if nobody showed it ever again. The radio show, called Whacko!, entertained me when I was about 9, and that’s about the level of humour. St Trinian’s it ain’t. But I would hate it if old films started being pulled for their attitudes (although I could stretch a point for most 70s comedy). Even when they’re unspeakably silly or boring I enjoy them for all sorts of reasons that have nothing much to do with the plot – the social history for instance, or location shots, or stumbling across young actors like Mitch Mitchell being a mouthy terror with a posh accent. After all, the entire history of cinema displays much to complain about in its attitude to women, as Mrs thep never tires of pointing out. What is Talking Pictures going to do about that? Beef up the warnings and continue on its merry way, would be my choice.
I see Ofcom girded their loins because one view complained. Surely they have more important things to do?
Just checked to see if BU was wiped as so many shows from that time were. Amazingly, it’s either coming out (or has already come out) on BluRay. Guess was shot on film rather than video which was then absurdly expensive*.
https://networkonair.com/coming-soon/3190-bottoms-up-blu-ray-
There’s also at least one episode of Wacko up on YT here
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jimmy+Edwards+Bottoms+Up
Some other interesting releases up there too
Interesting to see early footage of a pre-Watergate John Mitchell as one of the boys. Seems the punishment meted out by Jim did little to deter him from his later malfeasances as Tricky DIcky’s AG.
* I’m sure everyone here knows the story of what happened when Peter Cook offered to buy the BBC’s entire collection of Not Only, But Also broadcast videos.
Bottoms Up is an actual movie, so no question of it being wiped. When I checked to see if it was on DVD it turned out that Paris Hilton made a movie called Bottoms Up too…
So, no wiped Bottoms here – what ho?!
The Paris Hilton film I’ve seen was in black and white as well, as it happens…
I never knew that about Mitch Mitchell!
There always seems to be one or two new things each week and it certainly isn’t the only station that relies on repeats (can BBC Four stop showing all those TOTP soon, please).
Scotland Yard, Scales of Justice and the Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre are gems.
Tonight, there’s a film called “The Firechasers,” made in Britain in 1970.
Music by Laurie Johnson… Keith Barron, Allan Cuthbertson, Roy Kinnear… ticking every box so far… never heard of it!
That kind of cast list is like catnip to me. Likewise any British film comedy from about 1958 to 1967. Glorious. Once the British film sex comedies emerged (COR), “not so much”.
I have a terrible blind spot with Keith Barron, I just think he was really rubbish and it’s hugely irritating that it was him in the Nigel Barton plays. It would have been so much better with, say, Tom Courtenay (but he was probably too pricey for TV at the time)
“I have a terrible blind spot with Keith Barron” – ATS
For shame. It’s ruined my life, and you’re just making mock.
Mock!
It’s on YouTube,so I gave it a look, and….it wasn’t that great. Some nice period fashions, but I kept checking to see how much longer till the end.
To get all philosophical for a moment, isn’t the purpose of history to learn from the mistakes of the past?
We still have Armistice Day every Nov 11th to remember the fallen of WWI and WWII, and to remind us not to start a third.
When the Offsprings were younger, we read them To Kill A Mockingbird. We didn’t have to tell them the treatment of Tom Robinson was awful, they already knew. And they understood that not everything was better in the olden days, despite what their grandmother might tell them. I wouldn’t want Ofcom to remove it from the bookshelf, though.
Seeing the past as it actually was interferes with the ongoing Winston Smith-style prettifying of history. All so-called historical dramas are dominated, apart from the really obvious panto baddies, by people with the same social attitudes as C21st Guardian readers.
Same as it ever was – pretty much any period movie reflects the values and mores of the time in which it was made, as opposed to the time it’s portraying.
It’s the smaller British features I find particularly interesting & have me looking on reelstreets for the locations. Last weekend there were two great curios.
In the “Saturday Morning Pictures” slot, the Children’s Film Foundation feature was “Cup Fever” about a small team that lose their training ground, but the helpful policeman (Bernard Cribbins) gets them an afternoon training at the local club – Manchester United! They meet Matt Busby & the 65 team (inc Best, Charlton, & Stiles) are credited.
None of the boys went on to any great success, but the girls include Susan George & Olivia Hussey
On Sunday, they had “Calculated Risk” a British Bank Job thriller, filmed in the winter of 62, showing Shepherds Bush Market (Warren Mitchell) as a stall holder) and Isleworth cemetery.
The soundtrack was composed by George Martin – just when he would have started with the Beatles.
Any other channel would be publicising this information, but talking pictures goes quietly on…until Ofcom get a complaint.
I saw “Cup Final” this afternoon… never heard of it… what a film!
Anyone from Manchester/Salford/Altrincham should watch it at once.
It’s shot almost entirely on location and I imagine that 90% of that location has long since ceased to exist.
“Calculated Risk” I’ve got recorded.
Cup fever on agin at 0640.next Weds for those of us who missed it over the weekend
I watched Calculated Risk last week. Very enjoyable – and the snowy weather in the film is very obviously not something cooked up by the special effects team but real, freezing snow!
They’ve broadcast the film of the early 70s sitcom ‘The Lovers’ very much of its time but starring the much-missed Richard Beckinsale and the very-much-still-with-us Paula Wilcox. It was partially filmed on location in Manchester, and featured actual crowd scenes on match day at Old Trafford, and the opening scene was outside George Best’s boutique. Groovy days!
Read some recommendations here and have watched it a bit on a “special” TV service I get here. Really, it is mostly terrible, most TV from 50 years ago was not great, forgotten British B movies that were deservedly forgotten, all with loads of commercials and pretty poor picture quality. Better off finding an app that shows public domain content and you can choose what you watch.
I think it’s the unpretentiousness of a lot of the content that gives it charm, even when it’s not very good. These days everyone with a camera thinks they’re Tarkovsky or summat. Get over yerselves, put some fucking lights on and stop all that fucking mumbling.
And at least a shit film from the forties is over within 90 minutes instead of numbing your arse for three tedious hours of explosions and stupid raspy voices.
and CG bloody I
I like 1950s and early 1960s crime dramas. Coppers in coat and wrong ‘uns who speak Harry Enfield-type “women know your place” cockney with plenty of haitches, London streets without cars, and occasionally a fabulous location shot of mums with arms like hams who did the family wash by hand on a Monday.
…and nearly all men over the age of 25 look like Clement Atlee, wearing atrocious faded-black suits made from sacking for someone else who’s long dead.
The few cars you do see are bibulously round and probably do about half a mile to the gallon.
In those days everybody went straight from child to old-person with no intermediate stage. Only delinquents got to be teenagers.
Or yes. Violent Playground is a film I would never have seen if it hadn’t been for Talking Pictures TV, and that’s largely about delinquency. To prove it here’s a youthful David McCallum getting down with his bad self.
McCallum was actually in his mid 20s at the time; Stanley Baker (who never seems to have taken a day off if the TPTV schedules are to be believed) is the unimpressed copper.
Those kids at 1.04… “When I grow up I’m gonna be an Angelic Upstart…”
Another classic for location.
This is the Liverpool that the Beatles grew up in.
Again, I suspect 90% of it no longer exists.
Baker and McCallum had played brothers just the year before in the classic Hell Drivers.
Now that one really is a warty old classic.
The only film to have Dr. Who, James Bond, The Prisoner (all proper ones, not rubbish ones) and a Man from U.N.C.L.E. in it… and Sid James and Alfie Bass and Gordon Jackson and Stanley Baker…
A 100% stone cold classic.
That clip is so terrific it could be played unchanged on a comedy show, and the audience would be in hysterics. I was.
Early clip of Adam Clayton too, if I am not mistaken.
I imagine that OFCOM’s remit obliges them to investigate if they receive a complaint.
If they were to ignore a complaint, especially one from someone likely to escalate, they’d leave themselves open to accusations of not fulfilling their purpose, and possibly allegations that they’re ignoring other, more serious complaints.
I haven’t ever watched this channel, seen the programme in question or seen their pre-show warnings about material that could offend.
Perhaps they need to beef those warnings up. Give some information about why people might be offended.
I don’t see why they should have their output censored if content warnings are prominently enough given.
Likely to escalate? In a Stanah Stairlift, probably
Public service announcement: The Lone Ranger is on at 10.45 on Saturday. Episode 2 – origins of his horse, Silver and his silver bullets. I’m in.
Oh dear, Twang. Have a seat. Now, when a horse likes another horse very much….
When I was a kid i had Lone Ranger singles with someone telling the story with occasional sound effects – a neigh from Silver, the crack of a 6 gun. Thrilling.
The two things I love most about TP are:
The free pens the advertisers hand out in the commercial breaks (hope I live long enough to get the one from Michael “Do you think you’ll still be alive by the time this film’s finished running? Maybe you should start thinking about funeral costs!” Parkinson.
The fact that they have a special Sam Kydd day (actually given the number of films SK was in, every day is pretty much Sam Kydd day on TP)
Any Ronald Fraser films?
Loads.
The RF thing I’d love to see again was Badger, the late 60s series where he returns to the UK after years spent bossing the locals in the colonies. Ofcom’s phone will be ringing off the hook!
His best role was always ‘Orlando’ for me.
Where can one see this channel, by the way, is it available via Freeview, or do you have to live in Watford to see it, using a Pringles tube?
Freeview channel 81 – they did have some transmitter issues when they first set up, but I believe they have pretty much full coverage nowadays…
Their schedules are carried in most of the TV listings mags (even Radio Times!), but here’s a link to their own schedule site…https://talkingpicturestv.co.uk/schedule/
From 9.00 tonight you can settle down for Public Eye, followed by a decent thriller, And Soon The Darkness, enjoy!
Thanks, I’ll take a look, if I can tear myself away from Quest. Our signal here is flaky at best – we have to use the Mendip transmitter, which is actually, by line of sight, below the horizon!
Big fan of old Q-Tip then?
…stop hitting me!
Ofcom do indeed have to investigate any complaint.
I watched That’ll Be The Day on TP recently and it really grated in places – the treatment of women is fairly dreadful, including implied sex with an under age girl. It was a real jolt for me as I remember enjoying it immensely at the time and it was a reminder of how much we have moved on.
I have found programmes on TP tend to recommended by people on social media with some sort of remark along the lines of ‘of course the PC brigade wouldn’t allow this now’ rather than taking a more ‘look how far we’ve come’ approach!
The Fat Owl of The Remove thinks that Ofcom should bally well button their lip about stuff like this. There’s plenty on the main commercial channels that ought to get reined in long before any historical revisionism gets a look in on the complaints front.
Your postal order is on its way, WGB. Don,t worry if it’s delayed in the post. The PC brigade wIll cut up rusty if you experience any fat shaming from old Quelchy and the rotters in the Remove
By the way, they have been showing The Plank, which is an absolute Eric Sykes written classic.
The other thing I have learned about Ofcom while working on community radio has been that anyone can make a complaint without a shred of evidence, and Ofcom still go through the whole rigmarole of asking for log files and documentary evidence and a whole heap of paperwork. They had a complaint that we weren’t covering enough local news for a certain area – which wasn’t true at all – but we had to go back through logs and prove that we had. As I say, an allegation doesn’t need any evidence, and this was a purely vindictive action by a rival station.
As a kid I loved ‘Runaround’ which was repeated on TP recently. I watched an episode during the Christmas break and there was an advisory warning about the content. I know the seventies were ‘a different time’, but was Mike Reid really that bad?!
Runaraaaannnd! Naaaah!
Back in the late 70s/early 80s, my aunt lived in Southampton and was married to a producer at Southern TV studios. One summer I went down with my grandparents to stay with aunt Hiliary for a week. We went to the Isle of Wight on a hovercraft, to Hiliary’s Salvation Army meeting (she played the trumpet) and to A&E – I somehow cut my head open on a rake in the garden shed – I still have the scar on my forehead.
There was a Saturday morning kids TV show (called the Saturday Banana, I think) presented by Bill Oddie? For a treat, I went along to a live broadcast which, for some reason, was done in the STV car park. Mike Reid was there – was Runaround part of the show?
Anyhow, I had an Access All Areas pass so I headed off to see Mike Reid during an advert break. It was a bit breezy and the Runaround audience screaming was really loud. As I approached Mr Reid, he was heading to the catering van. He pulled on a sheepskin coat, lit up a cigar, and grabbed a coffee in a paper cup.
“It’s fackin’ freezin’ out ‘ere and the rackit them fackin’ kids is makin’ is doin’ my fackin’ ‘ead in”
Aunt Hiliary grabbed me by the hand, spun me through 180 degrees and we retreated into the crowd. “What a vile man!” I think it’s the closest aunt Hiliary ever came to swearing.
Why do I remember this rubbish?
You had a lucky escape, that was obviously not Mike Reid, but the infamous Big Vern. If Aunt Hillary hadn’t been there to divert you, the next – and last – thing you’d have heard would have been a loud BLAM!
Runaround definitely had an “edge” to it.
Reid seemed to be mildly happy some of the time and wildly unhappy most of the time.
In the early 1970s, in his incarnation as one of the Comedians, he seemed as likely to get a gig on Kids’ TV as Roger Melly was to get Countdown.
It must have been the “Ugly Duckling” hit that got his agent busy.
In “The Champions” Mike Reid pitches up in a couple of episodes as an extra (usually one of the bad guys), and Alexandra Bastedo, a model for the Pirelli calendar, is in an episode of “Scales of Justice” (1966, in a glorious colour that only seemed to exist in the mid-60s) alongside Keith Barron!
Alexandra Bastedo
Sorry, just wanted to see her name once more.
Oh I say.
Alexandra Bastedo was head girl at my sisters school when she was there. Where? Brighton & Hove High School for Girls.
Wasn’t AB also featured on the cover of a Smiths single?
(Actually the live album, Rank…)
Presenting us with the idea her as head girl isn’t helping.
The Champions used to be shown on Sunday morning telly on ITV, just before The World at One. I thought it impossibly glamorous.
There was that and Department S. Again another unattainable world.
Having said that I now have long lockdown hair and sideburns just like Jason King. Dreams CAN come true.
Well they can until your career gets ruined because the Five-Oh catch you importuning a policemen in the toilets of Gloucester Road Bus Station.
Useless fact, PW was nicknamed Petunia Winegum by his fellow theses and was in a long-term relationship with Alan Bates
Peter Wyngarde turned up in Flash Gordon (the one with the Queen theme song), but I don’t think you see him as he is wearing a mask the whole time. Unmistakable voice though…
He was indeed but that was a very, very rare appearance.
Absurd to think that someone’s sexuality could still cost them their career – not just in our lifetimes, but almost a decade after homosexuality was legalised
The short list of “out” movie stars and professional footballers would suggest a great many gay man feel they’re still not free to just be themselves – maybe because it might affect their career and maybe even more because of the poisonous climate of social media..
It was more the criminal conviction that stifled his career than anything else. It’s not so very long ago that the Metropolitan Police vice squad were making a practice of entrapping unwary homosexuals.
Before Freddie Laker came along in the early 70s with cheap-ish air travel, flying abroad was an expensive business only for the well-off. I remember in my year at primary school, just one child had ever been abroad, and in fact he was from the well-known local rich family…
… which is to say that the “travelogue” elements of these shows, and globe-trotting movies like James Bond, and even Alan Whicker’s programmes, was a huge part of their appeal for all of us stuck in the British wind and rain… the very idea that a few decades later, flying to the sunshine would be cheaper than taking the train to Manchester would have seemed quite ridiculous…
Department S. Again another unattainable world.
Not as unattainable as Vic, evidently.
Oh I say ! Very well played.
This afternoon the film It’s All Over Town has an appearance by the Hollies but also appearing as a salvationist Ivor Cutler.
Saw an amazing film on Talking Pictures last night… “Double Confession” from 1950.
Apparently it’s still officially down as “lost” at the BFI.
The plot was all over the place, but there were compensations.
Made on location, many scenes at Bexhill-on-Sea, including a wonderful Art Deco restaurant/bar, William Hartnell (as a gangster, a million miles from his Dr. Who incarnation) and, blink or you’ll miss them, cameos by Esme Cannon, Mona Washbourne, and Leslie Dwyer (who? Mr. Partridge in Hi-De-Hi), and an uncredited Peter Butterworth.
Exactly the kind of film that Talking Pictures was invented for.
I’ve been racking my brains to think of anything better than Talking Pictures to have happened in the last ten years in this country, and so far the only thing I can think of that comes anywhere near close was Leicester City winning the Premier League.
Hartnell is very often an edgy hard-man in he pre Who roles.
Peter Butterworth? Sold!
…just don’t expect too much. “All About Eve” it most definitely is not!
I’ve recorded “It’s All Over Town” (mentioned in an above post) a Frankie Vaughan film from 1963.
Dusty is there (pre-solo career) and a very young Hollies, but the over-riding impression I got was how RIGHT The Beatles got “A Hard Day’s Night.”
Where “It’s All Over Town” is all studio-set, The Beatles, or perhaps the makers of The Beatles’ film, recognised what was most important… to capture the world outside… 1964… something which the Frankie Vaughan vehicle completely fails to do.
His film could have been made at any time from 1930 to 1980, “A Hard Day’s Night” could only be 1964. The irony? It hasn’t dated!
The impression I get is that the Fabs simply didn’t have the time to make the film in a (then) more conventional way, plus in Lester they had a director who wanted to get the camera out there in the real world, Truffaut-style. Happy accidents.
The scenes in the TV studio are very meta for the time, and the stuff with Spinetti and the ‘grotty’ magazine was the kind of satire on ‘media types’ that even Alan Bennett wouldn’t get round to for three or four years after this.
In The Knack….and How to Get it, there’s a scene where Rita Tushingham’s character loudly shouts in public that she has been raped. Sounds chilling but it’s played for laughs, as if it is a Carry On film.
I put “The Knack” in my top 10 films a few months back.
Not sure that bit was played for laughs, but it is certainly difficult to work out.
Bear in mind, though, the play was written by a woman.
It’s not just worth watching to spot Victor Maddern or David Lodge in supporting roles, and how bombed out London still was in 1957, interesting though that is undoubtedly is. At about 1.00 on Tuesday morning, 16th, they’re showing Rock City, a documentary from 73. I’ve never seen it, but with footage of Hendrix, Tina Turner, Cream, Cat Stevens and others, probably worth a punt.
Rock City also has some great Rolling Stones videos. Hard to find for years
Stone cold classic:
Never heard of it before, Talking Pictures showed it last week… made in 1940 but, mercifully, doesn’t mention the war (I wouldn’t have watched it if it had) once… Michael Redgrave in “A Window in London.”
Fantastic for location filming, they’re building Waterloo Bridge at the time, and with a wonderful deft-of-hand twist.
Thirty seconds from the end… “oh, no, that’s what’s going to happen!”