The October Man

Plot synopsis:
When a bus crashes due to faulty steering, passenger Jim Ackland (John Mills) sustains a serious brain injury and a young girl under his care is killed. Guilt ridden, he attempts suicide twice during his recovery.
He starts a new job as an industrial chemist and gets a room in a hotel. When he reluctantly accepts an invitation for a night out, he meets Jenny Carden (Joan Greenwood), the sister of his co-worker, Harry (Patrick Holt). They begin seeing each other quite regularly. Things reach the point where he confesses he wants to marry her, but he tells her he wants to be sure he has fully recovered first.
Molly Newman (Kay Walsh), one of the other hotel residents, asks to borrow £30 from him, a rather substantial sum. As he doesn't have that much on him, Jim good-naturedly writes her a cheque. She is found strangled the next night. Wilcox (Jack Melford), a married businessman Molly had been seeing, has an alibi. Jim admits to have been walking in the vicinity of the murder site; that plus the recovered cheque from the crime scene and his head injury make him the prime suspect. Police Inspector Godby (Frederick Piper) suspects he was another of Molly's boyfriends and that, after falling in love with Jenny, he wanted to rid himself of a possible blackmailer.
When Jim learns that Mr. Peachy, the person who lived in the room directly below Molly's, had told the police that Jim was in her room every night, Jim confronts him in his room. Peachy brazenly admits killing Molly, confident that there is no evidence against him. Peachy had regularly given her money; when Jim made her a loan, it had given rise to an insane jealousy, with fatal results.
Jim goes to the police, but they do not believe him. When they come to take him into custody, Jim flees. He follows Peachy to Paddington Station, then discovers from a tag on Peachy's luggage that he intends to flee the country by plane. He phones Godby with the flight information, but when that appears to have no effect, contemplates suicide again. Fortunately, a letter Molly had posted to Wilcox just before her death incriminates Peachy who's arrested. Jenny finds Jim and gives him the good news.

Tags: murder

Review:
Top class British entertainment of the old school, when the UK had a film industry.
Atmospheric, edgy plot and direction (for 1947) thanks to Eric Ambler, and lots of period detail of character and setting that come from a world gone by.
You'll laugh, but you'll be rooting for John Mills in the seedy lodging house full of dodgy salesmen, lingerie models and brigadiers' spinster daughters all the way.
Mills is often a bit (literally) lightweight in leading roles, but here the character of a vulnerable, sensitive junior scientist fits like a glove.
The superb John Mills plays a man with a history of emotional imbalance.
There's an elderly resident who begs for more coal on the fire: The way she's written to do this made me think of a leitmotif from an Eliot poem.There's a homely bachelor; there's an attractive young woman involved with a married man.
And, there are assorted eccentrics thrown in as well.Mills meets Joan Greenwood, she of the dark, husky voice.
And a murder takes place.That's all I will say, lest I give anything at all away: Try hard to see this little beauty of a film, knowing as little of the plot in advance as I did.
This post-war (1947) English psychological thriller directed by Roy Ward Baker is distinguished by its superb photography in deep blacks and brilliant whites by the German-English lighting cameraman Erwin Hillier who had been a camera assistant on Fritz Lang's "M" and Murnau's "Tabu." Hillier uses the expressionistic techniques associated with these German director's film's to create a complex series of highlights and shadows, contrasting high and low angle camera compositions to create a atmosphere of both glossy glamour and terrifying suspense.
A long forgotten British film that is worth a look..
A wonderful old black and white British film, that has John Mills suffering from a head injury sustained in a bus crash, is the suspect in a murder mystery, when a girl that he has helped out with some money, has  been found dead.
Good performances from the whole cast and the audience is kept in suspense up to the final scenes as to weather the murderer will escape..
The October Man (1947)A tightly constructed, well acted, moody, night drenched murder mystery.
The romance, at least, is satisfying--the couple seems a good match.Eric Ambler, who wrote and produced, was a high visibility popular author at the time, and you have to assume the movie feels as close to the writer's intentions as possible.
Director Roy Ward Baker is only on his second film here, and it shows a natural talent for economy and drama.
(He would later direct the Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe suspense noir, "Don't Bother to Knock" during a stay in Hollywood.) His most famous film might now be "A Night to Remember" because it was the most complete telling of the Titanic story leading up to Cameron's.In a seemingly British way, the story here is neatly contained.
Agatha Christy comes to mind when the main character enters the hotel where most of the action occurs, and we get to know the small number of residents there, each a distinct type.
The leading man, the falsely accused victim of an earlier bus crash, is rather excellent, played by veteran serious actor John Mills.
One of the best pieces of acting I've seen John Mills do is in this film The October Man. It takes part of its plot from Laura and part of it from the American film High Wall that starred Robert Taylor.Mills as he did on so many occasions was the British average Joe who as it happens suffers a traumatic brain injury as a result of a train wreck.
But when Walsh turns up murdered, Mills is looking real good for it to Scotland Yard guys Frederick Piper and John Boxer.Of course Mills didn't do it, but the fascinating thing with The October Man is that we do learn before the end who did do it and that individual confesses to Mills.
It's one of the best pieces of acting I've ever seen from John Mills.
He does you really do think he's about to get into a jackpot not of his own doing.The October Man was very much influenced by Hollywood noir, although I'm sure our friends across the pond could say our noir films were influenced by this.
And John Mills is heartbreaking in the role.Don't miss this if it is ever broadcast again on this side of the Atlantic..
All the performances in this film are great, but John Mills deserves a special mention for his excellent work in the lead role.
The film also has great cinematography, a well-orchestrated sound-track and an excellent plot.
John Mills is the "October Man" in this small 1947 British film costarring Joan Greenwood.Mills plays Jim Ackland, a man involved in a tragic train accident that killed the child of a friend (actually played by Juliet Mills) he was returning to town.
His neighbor in the house is a pretty young woman (Joan Greenwood) who apparently is always having money trouble and possibly traded either downright sex or nookies for money with another resident of the house, Mr. Peachy (Edward Chapman).
Suspicion falls on Jim because of the check, the fact that he wasn't home that night she was killed and because of idle gossip started by Mr. Peachey.
Meanwhile, Jim has fallen in love with his coworker's sister; though his old terrors return, he realizes that he needs to keep fighting and clear himself of the murder.This is a good movie with a superb performance by John Mills and real British atmosphere which lends itself to the story and bumps up the suspense.
As someone correctly stated, it is sort of a film noir but really more psychological in nature, which was all the rage after World War II.
Written by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Baker, it's kind of a British answer to Hollywod's noir, essentially a reworking of Grahame Greene's Ministry Of Fear.
Chemist (and I do mean "chemist", not pharmacist or apothecary) John Mills blames himself for the death a friend's daughter in a bus crash, which also gives Mills a concussion and tendencies towards blackouts and amnesia.
Quicker than you can say "Alfred Hitchcock" Mills is accused of murdering a fellow resident of his boarding house, and poor old John can't remember if he did it or not.
What's most fascinating to me is the subtext -- Mills is clearly supposed to represent returning war veterans, but the film's makers were too afraid to have war wounds be the source of his blackouts (even though H'wood had already done it in The Blue Dahlia) and instead resorted to the bus crash contrivance.
There is effective direction by Baker (who went to H'wood and made the classic 3D "depthie" Inferno, later returning to England to do A Night To Remember) and Ambler's script is good, with a few surprise scattered throughout..
The October man is directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Eric Ambler.
It stars John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey, Catherine Lacey, Adrianne Allen and Felix Aylmer.
Music is by William Alwyn and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.Following a bus crash that killed a friends child that he was treating to a day out, Jim Ackland (Mills) suffers a brain injury.
That is until he financially helps one of the young lady residents of the hotel and becomes the chief suspect when she winds up murdered in a park.
Jim has no recollection of committing the crime, but he was in the parkPulsing with moody atmospherics, this Brit noir – psychological - thriller showcases the best of John Mills and the higher end of the British noir splinter.
Jim Ackland is suicidal and nursing amnesia, yet the hotel where he lives, itself a relic of a London that time forgot, is full of human beings from different ends of the evolutionary scale.
It's not a good place for Jim to be, a cuckoos nest of spiteful, suspicious, vengeful, lonely people, Jim in fact, in spite of his problems, appears to be the only sane one there!There is no great "whodunit" to be solved here, some critics have bizarrely complained that the murderer is too obvious!
Bizarre because the makers don't try and hide who it is, the film is firmly interested in the human condition, in how members of society react post a heinous crime, and of course how the afflicted antagonist fights his corner when confronted by hostility and his own mental confusion.
He has a good eye for the visual traits that often marry up with human feelings or behaviour, of course having someone of Hillier's class on cinematography duty naturally helps him through his debut production.Splendid entertainment.
John Mills innocently persecuted all but to death..
Until that happens, the film is of little interest, while it then starts stirring with ever increasing tension, forcing your interest never to relax for one moment but actually compelling you to overwhelming empathy with the hardships of John Mills, who is exposed to horrible pressure, just because he is stamped as a mental invalid.
His performance dominates the film, while Joan Greenwood is always a revelation.
The face of John Mills as Mr Peachy expresses his mind will stay in your mind forever - it's a marvel of a scene.
Not all Eric Ambler's characters are completely credible, while the character here realized by John Mills is the more so.
The cinematography is first class and enjoyable.I found the story unfortunately a little too obvious (you know who did it immediately) and that it will be resolved in some way in the letter the murdered woman sent.Also you have to suspend disbelief on numerous things...that the police wouldn't search the dead woman's room carefully (and find her love letters) is the most obvious one.
There were others (it sure is easy to escape from British cops) but for what movies do you not have to suspend your disbelief a little?It is too bad they couldn't have sharpened up the story just a bit because all the other values are excellent...acting superb camera work etc...It rates a 7--it is leagues better than most of the quota British films of the 50s.RECOMMEND.
When a bus crashes due to mechanical failure, industrial chemist Jim Ackland survives but suffers a serious head injury that he has not fully recovered from even when he is discharged from hospital.
However with his head injury, even Ackland himself cannot be sure that he didn't do it and the gallows beckon.The basic plot sounded like it would be a cross between the "innocent accused out to clear his name" crossed with the "I've got amnesia could I be the killer?" plot devices and I suppose in essence that is just what it is.
Even after the murder the whole thing moves forward with very little urgency and it is only in the final ten minutes where you feel like lives are at stake here and that things are urgent.
By this time though it is too little too late and the whole thing is sorted out far too easily and tidily.The cast can't do a great deal with the material given all these problems.
Mills is a sturdy and reliable lead but he just seems a little disturbed by the accusations and you never believe that he is a man pushed close to the edge.
Support from Greenwood, Walsh, Carey and others is all so-so but in fairness, as with all of them, the material didn't give any of them much to work with.Overall this is a familiar story but it is told with such a sleepy pace that it is hard to have interest in the telling.
The cast are left to do the best they can but neither they nor the director can get any pace into the film and I just gradually lost interest to the point where a final ten minutes of dramatic music, running and "races against time" weren't enough to save it..
I was unfamiliar with any of the actors, although I think I had hear John Mills name before.
While the actors seemed to portray their characters reasonably, I think it was more the lack of pace and excitement in the plot itself that was this film's flaw.
I'm a big fan of mystery films, so I was expecting to be held in suspense and on the edge of my seat, but there was none of that here for me.Even though John Mills I'm sure is a decent actor, he seemed a little milquetoast in personality.
And I love the time period and seeing the old house and sets..
The film begins with John Mills on a bus, trying to entertain a friend's daughter.
Suddenly, as the bus nears a train, it loses control and slams into a wall--killing the girl and leaving Mills with a skull injury so severe he was hospitalized for a year.
However, now that the year has passed, he's discharged and the staff is concerned about his ability to make it on the outside.At first, Mills is very tentative around others and tends to keep to himself at the boarding house while working at a local chemical plant.
Life certainly looks good for him when out of the blue, one of the fellow lodgers at the boarding house is murdered.
With his head injury and past emotional instability he's a natural suspect though he didn't have any reason for killing her.Much of the rest of the film concerns Mills trying in vain to prove his innocence.
The problem is that the police think it's an open and shut case and they refuse to take him seriously--leaving him no choice but to go on the run to prove his innocence.There are many excellent twists and turns (particularly when he discovers who the murder is) and the acting is excellent (particularly that of John Mills).
Because it didn't take cheap or easy ways out in the plot and kept me guessing, it really impressed me and is a film I'd heartily recommend.By the way, the little girl at the beginning of the film was Mills' real-life daughter, Juliet!
Also, note the cinematography as Mills is on the railway bridge--it's quite a beautiful and impressive scene (especially the first time)..
I love this film for the atmosphere.
It seems to be always October, the dark time of the year, and the cast seem to love wandering about a lonely common at night.
John Mills comes out of hospital to live in a residential hotel.
John Mills falls for the sister of a colleague, whose family represents normality and thick- headed respectability.
....so says Molly (Kay Walsh) to Jim Ackland (John Mills), trying to show some hospitality when he gallantly fixes a fuse.
At that moment she couldn't be further from the truth - even though he is getting a second chance at life after spending time in a mental institution, he still blames himself for the death of a little girl (Mill's own daughter Juliette) in his care and life in a typical London boarding house isn't helping.
On his first evening he instantly falls foul of a couple of elderly residents when he refuses to sit in for a rubber of bridge.At times he feels suicidal, but time, a steady job at a chemical plant and new friends, including sympathetic and understanding Jenny (beautiful Joan Greenwood) show him that life can be worth living.
This is a superlative movie and, I believe, shows John Mills in one of his best performances - he was always at his best depicting decent "everymen" who find circumstances around them spinning out of control.
With a screenplay by Eric Ambler, based on his book, you can't expect anything else but excellence.One of the residents, Molly, has a complicated love life.
Jim finds through a series of circumstances (fixing the light in her room, giving her some money so she can return to her family) that someone has implicated him as the main suspect and of course the police don't believe him.It doesn't help that the cheque Jim gave her is found crumpled near her body and Jim admits to walking on the common that night.
It is always dark and foggy outside the boarding house, with vignettes of residents (helpful, though nosey landlady, querolous older guest, elderly lady forever wanting coal and helpful young man) giving the movie an edge.
From then on he is just one jump ahead of the law - there is one exciting scene when he is looking for some "left luggage" at the railway station and needs quick thinking to escape the claustrophobic compartment without bumping into an eager constable.Kay Walsh had already co-starred with John Mills in "This Happy Breed" and "In Which We Serve" and later with films like "Oliver Twist" and "Stage Fright" proved herself a superb character actress.
She's the upper-middle-class girl friend of possible maniac John Mills here.
The film demonstrates her range as an actress.And Mills' too.
Mills is released from a psychiatric hospital after suffering a brain injury during which a child in his care was killed.
But one of his friends in a neighboring room, an honest and pretty young lady to whom he lends money, is murdered and suspicion falls on Mills -- the ex wreck.The pace picks up at this point, about a third of the way through, as the police enter the picture.
The investigations centers on Mills and in fact the film leaves some room for doubt.
A fine, well-made thriller on a classical theme : an innocent man who gets suspected of a dire crime, and needs to outwit both the killer and the police.
This kind of thing can easily devolve into a hothouse atmosphere full of snobism, spying and gossip.If you like a classical thriller in the British and restrained vein, you're sure to love this gem.