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DVD Description
From stalwart Ealing director Basil Dearden (The Blue Lamp, Pool of London) comes this enjoyable yet creepy wartime tale of a group of strangers driven to rake shelter at a remote Welsh inn during a storm. What they don’t know is that the inn was bombed by a German plane a year ago and their hosts were killed in the blast. Starring Mervyn Johns (A Christmas Carol) and real-life daughter Glynis Jones (Mary Poppins), The Halfway House was written by Anghus Mcphail (Whiskey Galore!, It Always Rains on Sunday), Diana Morgan (Went The Day Well?, Pink String and Sealing Wax) and T.E.B. Clarke (Passport to Pimlico, The Titfield Thunderbolt) from the stage play by Dennis Ogden.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An official DVD release - at long last!,
By Simon "Progger" (Kent, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Halfway House [DVD] (1944) (DVD)
A wonderful, magical film imbued with all the atmosphere typical of the period. Superb performances and story backed with peerless cinematography (that jack Cardiff would have been proud of) and atmospheric music.During the latter part of the second world war, a group of disparate travellers end up at a remote Welsh Inn that was supposedly blown up and subsequently burnt down by a stray German raider. Yet, the pub still stands and its host and his daughter, played by real life father and daughter, Mervyn and Glynis Johns, are still there. The whole place has an other worldly feel and all of the troubles that the customers bring with them are confronted by the ghostly proprietors. Odd things are noticed by the travellers - the hosts cast no shadows and the newspapers and radio broadcasts are all a year out of date. This is nothing short of superb and ranks alongside the very best of the war's cinematic output and remains one of my favourite films of all time.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Atmospheric and entertaining.,
By
This review is from: The Halfway House [DVD] (1944) (DVD)
This film was made as morale boosting propaganda during WWII, along with films like 'Went the Day Well?', 'The Day will Come' etcetera. If pushed I would say that this was my favourite of the bunch. We are presented with a set of characters alienated from the struggle against Germany by circumstances - loss of a son, a sea captain wrongly blamed for abandoning his ship, a citizen of the Irish republic. Their gradual reengagement in the war effort is nicley tied in with a mild ghost story, introduced so gradually and gently that it does more in the line of adding atmosphere than powering the plot, but none the worse for that.It is basically the redemption theme found in 'A Christmas Carol', 'The Singing Detective' etcetera, but applied to the wartime situation. Highly recommended - the sort of film you can watch repeatedly because atmosphere is as important as plot.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasant break,
By
This review is from: The Halfway House [DVD] (1944) (DVD)
This is a pleasant Ealing whimsy set in wartime deepest Wales. The war is not far away but people's troubles are the focus. A handful of strangers turn up at a pub in June 1943, the `Halfway House', for a short break. We know the pub was bombed flat a year before and would not be there at all were this not a mysterious time-shift story of a kind seen previously in J.B.Priestley's plays. The hotel register's entry for 20 June 1942 is followed by the one for 21 June 1943. The publican (played by Mervyn Johns) appears from nowhere while his daughter (Glynis Johns) casts no shadow. The guests include a famous orchestral conductor who is dying (Esmond Knight, whose near blindness from injuries got in HMS Prince of Wales' fight with the Bismarck in 1941 in undetectable). Among others are an amusingly discordant couple with their scheming teenage daughter, a cashiered army officer ( Guy Middleton), and a merchant navy captain and his spiritualist wife. It's undeniable to the guests that something curious is happening when the 9 o'clock news on the wireless tells them "Tobruk has fallen", exactly a year out of date. It's not long before we hear a bomber and machine gun fire and see an incendiary bomb. Past events are repeating themselves. The hosts, who should know about these things, have been gently telling the guests they can take charge of their futures in all essentials, and, anyway, eternity is not too bad when you get there. Watch - and re-watch.
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