The October Man
Encyclopedia
The October Man is a 1947 mystery film starring John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...

 and Joan Greenwood
Joan Greenwood
Joan Greenwood was an English actress. Born in Chelsea, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her husky voice, coupled with her slow, precise elocution, was her trademark...

, based on a novel by Eric Ambler
Eric Ambler
Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. Ambler also used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.-Life:...

, who also adapted it and produced. A man is suspected of murder, and due to the lingering effects of a brain injury sustained in an earlier accident, he himself is unsure whether he is innocent or not.

Plot

When a bus crashes due to faulty brakes, passenger Jim Ackland (John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...

) 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
Joan Greenwood
Joan Greenwood was an English actress. Born in Chelsea, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her husky voice, coupled with her slow, precise elocution, was her trademark...

), 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
Kay Walsh
Kay Walsh was an English actress and dancer. She grew up in Pimlico, raised by her grandmother....

), 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), the married businessman Molly had been seeing, has an alibi
Alibi
Alibi is a 1929 American crime film directed by Roland West. The screenplay was written by West and C. Gardner Sullivan, who adapted the 1927 Broadway stage play, Nightstick, written by Elaine Sterne Carrington, J.C...

. Jim admits to have been walking in the vicinity of the murder site; that plus the cheque 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 London, 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 has no effect, contemplates suicide again. Fortunately, a letter Molly had posted to Wilcox just before her death incriminates Peachy. Jenny finds Jim and gives him the good news.

Cast

  • John Mills
    John Mills
    Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...

     as Jim Ackland
  • Joan Greenwood
    Joan Greenwood
    Joan Greenwood was an English actress. Born in Chelsea, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her husky voice, coupled with her slow, precise elocution, was her trademark...

     as Jenny Carden
  • Edward Chapman
    Edward Chapman (actor)
    Edward Chapman was an English actor who starred in many films and television programmes, but is chiefly remembered as "Mr. Wilfred Grimsdale", the officious superior and comic foil to Norman Wisdom's character of Pitkin in many of his films from the late 1950s and 1960s.Chapman was born in...

     as Mr. Peachy
  • Kay Walsh
    Kay Walsh
    Kay Walsh was an English actress and dancer. She grew up in Pimlico, raised by her grandmother....

     as Molly Newman
  • Joyce Carey
    Joyce Carey
    Joyce Carey, OBE was a British actress, best known for her long professional and personal relationship with Noël Coward. Her stage career lasted from 1916 until 1984, and she was performing on television in her nineties. Though never a star, she was a familiar face both on stage and screen...

     as Mrs. Vinton, a shrewish hotel resident
  • Catherine Lacey
    Catherine Lacey
    Catherine Lacey was an English actress who made her film debut in 1938 as the secretive nun who wears high heels in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes . She was an established stage character player before she was 30...

     as Miss Selby, the hotel manageress
  • Adrianne Allen
    Adrianne Allen
    Adrianne Allen was an English stage actress.Most often seen in light comedy, played Sybil Chase in the original West End production of Private Lives and Elizabeth Bennet in the 1935 Broadway production of Pride and Prejudice.She appeared in several films and was the mother of Daniel and Anna...

     as Joyce Carden
  • Felix Aylmer
    Felix Aylmer
    Sir Felix Edward Aylmer Jones, OBE was an English stage actor who also appeared in the cinema and on television.-Early life and career:...

     as Dr. Martin

  • Frederick Piper
    Frederick Piper
    Frederick Piper was an English actor who appeared in over 80 films and many television productions in a career spanning over 40 years. Never a leading player, Piper was usually cast in minor, sometimes uncredited, parts although he also appeared in some more substantial supporting roles...

     as Detective Inspector Godby
  • John Boxer
    John Boxer (British actor)
    John Boxer was a British film and television actor.Boxer's television appearances included Emergency – Ward 10, Dixon of Dock Green, The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk , The Onedin Line and The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.-Selected filmography:* There Ain't No Justice * Convoy *...

     as Detective Sergeant Troth
  • Patrick Holt
    Patrick Holt
    Patrick Holt was a British film and television actor.-Biography:Patrick Holt's real name was Patrick G. Parsons. Some of his childhood was spent in India with his Uncle. Patrick was sent to Christ's Hospital, a famous charity school in England, UK...

     as Harry Carden
  • George Benson
    George Benson (actor)
    George Christopher Benson was a Welsh and English actor of both theatre and screen, whose career spanned from the 1930s to the late 1970s...

     as Mr. Pope, a sympathetic hotel resident
  • Jack Melford
    Jack Melford
    Jack Melford was a British film and television actor. He was the brother of screenwriter and film director Austin Melford.-Selected filmography:* Find the Lady * Luck of the Turf * Scruffy...

     as Wilcox
  • Esme Beringer as Miss Heap
  • Ann Wilton as Miss Parsons
  • James Hayter
    James Hayter
    James Hayter was a British actor.He was born in Lonavala, India, brought up in Scotland and died in Spain. His best remembered film roles include Friar Tuck in the 1952 film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men and Samuel Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers of the same year...

     as Garage man
  • Sid James
    Sid James
    Sid James was an English-based South African actor and comedian. He made his name as Tony Hancock's co-star in Hancock's Half Hour and also starred in the popular Carry On films. He was known for his trademark "dirty laugh" and lascivious persona...

     as uncredited man who bumps into Ackland when he first arrives at Brockenhurst Common

Cast notes:
  • John Mills' daughter, Juliet Mills, plays the part of the young child who is killed in a bus accident at the beginning of the film. She was five years old at the time, and it was her third film appearance.

Production

Director Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker , born Roy Horace Baker, was an English film director, credited as Roy Baker for much of his career. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for Best English-Language Foreign Film in 1959...

 was an assistant director for Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

 on The Lady Vanishes
The Lady Vanishes (1938 film)
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White...

(1938), while cinematographer Erwin Hillier
Erwin Hillier
Erwin Hillier was a German-born cinematographer known for his work in British cinema from the 1940s to 1960s.-Early career:...

 had performed the same function for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Powell and Pressburger
The British film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, also known as The Archers, made a series of influential films in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1981 they were recognized for their contributions to British cinema with the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, the most prestigious...

 on I Know Where I'm Going
I Know Where I'm Going!
I Know Where I'm Going! is a 1945 romance film by the British-based film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey, and features Pamela Brown, Finlay Currie and Petula Clark in her fourth film appearance....

(1945). The film was made at Denham Studio in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....

, England, and location shooting was done at Paddington Station
Paddington station
Paddington railway station, also known as London Paddington, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex.The site is a historic one, having served as the London terminus of the Great Western Railway and its successors since 1838. Much of the current mainline station dates...

 in London.

Reception

In his New York Times review, Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

called it a "second rate film" with "a first-rate actor [John Mills]...surrounded by a generally competent cast". In general, though, the film received good critical notices.
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