23 Paces to Baker Street (1956)

Director: Henry Hathaway

Writers: Philip MacDonald (novel), Nigel Balchin (screenplay)

Stars: Van Johnson, Vera Miles and Cecil Parker

Genres: Mystery | Thriller

Philip Hannon, a blind playwright living in London, overhears a part of a conversation , that leads him into a desperate race, to search out a kidnapped kid. When he gets no facilitate from the police, he along side his butler, and his ex fiancée, conceive to track down the crooks.

  IMDb

IMDb Plot Keywords

Minor Masterpiece; Relentless Beautiful Noir Mystery Achievement

This I assert may be a minor masterpiece of film-making, that has long been underestimated by critics however never by fans. Its images, I suggest, burn themselves into the mind where different cinematic tales soon pale and are forgotten. to say simply many scenes, the film presents a blind playwright describing the read of the Thames to the fiancé he left behind, a stunning nanny who is not quite what she looks enjoying another nanny or maybe not, a sightless man guiding a lost man through a fog, an equivalent man discovering that a building's front is not there and a battle within the darkness between a murderer and victim. The script, custom-made from a tense Philip MacDonald novel by Nigel Balchin, was created into what I say is an expensive-looking and relentlessly lovely film by veteran director Henry Hathway. Henry Ephron created, and each component was realized seemingly by flawless ability, from understated music by Leigh Harline to the cinematography by Milton R. Krasne, to the art direction by Lyle Wheeler and Maurice Ransford, to the outstanding set decorations by Walter M. Scott and Fay Babock and costumes by Travilla. Add famed Ben Nye as makeup artist and therefore the nice Helen Turpin as hair stylist and it'd be exhausting for this film to own gone something however terribly right. The forged is headed by beautiful young Vera Miles because the love interest and Van Johnson looming one thing terribly fine because the blind playwright, Philip Hannon. Maurice Denham plays a befuddled police Inspector, and Cecil Parker tries exhausting as Hannon's assistant. Patricia Laffan has her best role since Quo Vadis because the mysterious Miss MacDonald, stealing each scene she is in. different actors showing to advantage embrace inside this strongly-made and taut fictional noir mystery Liam Redmond, Isobel Elsom, spirited Estelle Winwood, Martin Benson, Natalie Norwick, and Terence de Marney. On the grounds of pace, intelligence of dialog and sheer memorability alone, this is often a prime Hundred film, and therefore the father to several stories starring blind protagonists from TV's "Longstreet" to "Wait till Dark". There had been films a couple of blind central character before; however this Technicolor, enticing and exciting film was the project that brought the concept of such films to the minds of producers and viewers alike as none before had done. The mystery i feel is a noteworthy one, the characters believable from 1st to last, and therefore the extraordinary work by Patricia Laffan and Vera Miles raise the film so much on top of its competitors' best. it's clearly far better than "in the warmth of the Night", the obsessive "Vertigo" or maybe "Key Largo". And its manufacturers accomplish its power while not striving consciously to attain it. Were it not for "Rear Window", the film may be thought of the simplest 50's noir of all. i like to recommend it unreservedly.