Grand National Night (a.k.a. Wicked Wife) (1945)

Directed by Bob McNaught; produced by Phil C Samuel

Gerald Coates (Nigel Patrick) is a successful horse-breeder and trainer whose horse has just won the Grand National. He also has an unfaithful, alcoholic wife, Babs (Moira Lister). The night of the race, his relationship with his spouse reaches a climax, and she doesn’t make it to the morning alive. Coates tells a sympathetic friend, Joyce (Beatrice Campbell), that he killed Babs, and the two watch as the investigation, headed by a determined police detective (Michael Hordern), closes in on the guilty party.

A neat little crime film, quite English, Grand National Night benefits from a number of elements, starting with the acting. Patrick makes a sympathetic protagonist, and Lister a suitably off-putting victim. Both make their characters human and imperfect, while maintaining their principal traits. Patrick was a very popular leading man in British film of the day, though most of his pictures seem to fall into the B category, and, unfortunately, are largely forgotten today.

Campbell and Patrick have a natural affinity for each other; perhaps not surprising, as they were married in real-life, remaining so for nearly thirty years. They were in more than one movie together. With the exception of Hordern, the other cast-members are unknown now, and may have been then. But, as is the way with British character actors, they feel perfectly at home with their parts, adding considerably to the movie.

(Richard Graydon (credited as Richard Grayden), who plays the groom, Chandler, was a very minor actor at the time. He soon found his calling, though, becoming a movie stuntman and stunt-coordinator, apparently at the age of forty. His credits in this line include many James Bond films (from Connery’s era to Moore’s); Raiders of the Lost Ark; The Charge of the Light Brigade (in which he played Lord Bingham); The Duellists (he’s the Russian Harvey Keitel’s character shoots); Don’t Look Now; The Wild Geese; ffolkes, and 1989’s Batman. He dealt often with horses.)

The story comes from a stage-play, and the script, heavy with dialogue, shows this. The writing is good, with bright moments, usually depicting character or humour (such as an instance when someone asks why a character called ‘Buns’ Darling is called ‘Buns’. The response is that ‘we can’t very well call him Darling’…) There is an example of what might be considered a deus ex machine, but in fact there are earlier clues as to its use, and the finale is, I believe, perfectly legitimate in a crime-film, if not in a mystery.

The handling of the characters, especially the principal two, is very good. Gerald might have come across as indifferent to his wife’s problems, but it is made clear that he has given her opportunities for reconciliation previously, and she has not made the most of them. As well, there are hints that their lives together were more frivolous before the war, when he was captured and incarcerated in a Japanese prison camp. For her part, Babs wants her marriage to work, but it is clearly not the relationship it was in the past; she can neither cope with that, nor change her destructive habits arising from it.

The direction has a dichotomy to it: in some ways, it seems rather self-conscious, using close-ups and zooms rather too obviously, perhaps trying too hard for a Hitchcockian element. On the other hand, the movie’s stage origins are effectively broadened, and satisfactorily adapted to the big screen. The setting is largely a horse-breeding country estate; advantage is taken of this to have a number of riding scenes, or scenes placed beyond the confines of drawing rooms and entrance halls.

Grand National Night is a good if minor thriller, benefitting from capable performances, decent writing and a feel for the English countryside.