The Girl in the News (1940)

Directed by Carol Reed; produced by Edward Black and Maurice Ostrer

A nurse (Margaret Lockwood) in private practice is tried for the murder of her client, but rightly acquitted, thanks to her barrister (Barry K Barnes). After a long and frustrating search for a new situation - not many people wish to hire a nurse who was accused of homicide - she is hired to care for a semi-invalid in his quiet suburban home. When he dies, questions are asked: was it coincidence; conspiracy; suicide? History is repeating itself with frightening results.

Like the recently reviewed Take My Life, The Girl in the News is a crime story, rather than a mystery. Whatever its exact genre, however, it is an entertaining yarn. The personalities involved in its production constitute a powerful selection of British cinema names. The director is Carol Reed, still with his best years ahead of him, while the writer is Sydney Gilliat, who would add successful direction and production credits to his resumé later. The script is smart and amusing, creating real characters who use their intelligence, though it doesn’t mean they don’t stumble in their thinking. The ending, while not clever, is satisfying. Gilliat knows his legal and police procedures, though: it is only after an initial inquiry by the local constabulary that Scotland Yard is summoned.

The writing is a good example of how, in the past, imagination was exercised to include risqué dialogue, a feat hardly used today. A scene includes a discussion between a maid and a cook regarding sleeping pills. The maid, whose morals may be a bit questionable, states that she has never needed sleeping pills, as she ‘sleeps by herself’, to which the cook mutters, “I’m glad to hear that…”

The actors, though led by Lockwood and Barnes, include Emlyn Williams, later to gain fame as a playwright (probably for the best; his acting here is rather wooden) and Roger Livesey, giving a natural and droll performance as a police sergeant, and showing why he would become a leading man in his own right a few years later. Other roles are filled by Basil Radford (without Naunton Wayne) and Felix Aylmer, while the uncredited Leo Genn, Michael Hordern and Roland Culver would have long and respected careers on stage and screen. Mervyn Johns, seen in last week’s The Halfway House, has a small but pivotal role in The Girl in the News, while Kathleen Harrison, his co-star from the later Scrooge (a.k.a. A Christmas Carol) has an even smaller part, though they don’t share a scene here. (Oddly, both Johns and Livesey look older in this film than they would appear in later roles, likely a tribute to their acting.)

Another point of interestin The Girl in the News is its essential Britishness. There are a number of scenes and lines of dialogue that highlight this. The British legal system is shown in action and at one point Livesey remarks to Barnes (their characters are friends and roommates) that the latter won’t be able to think of marriage until he sits on the Woolsack (the padded seat on which the lord chancellor reposes as speaker of the House of Lords); in other words, he can’t marry until he reaches the pinnacle of his career. This line may be obscure even to modern Britons. At another point, street traffic is stopped for the ‘opening of the assizes’ (county court), which includes a procession of the judge and local notables. With the coming of the World War, this movie may have been one of the last British films produced with exclusively British audiences in mind.

Whether simply as an enjoyable story or as a hefty block of British motion picture history, The Girl in the News is worthwhile viewing.