Guilt Is My Shadow | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Directed by | Roy Kellino |
Screenplay by | Roy Kellino Ivan Foxwell John Gilling (additional scenes) |
Based on | You're Best Alone 1943 novel by Norah Lofts |
Produced by | Ivan Foxwell |
Starring | Elizabeth Sellars Patrick Holt Peter Reynolds |
Cinematography | William McLeod |
Edited by | George Clark |
Music by | Hans May |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Associated British-Pathé Stratford Pictures Corporation |
Release date | 22 March 1950 |
Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Box office | £102,299 (UK) [1] |
Guilt Is My Shadow is a 1950 British drama film directed by Roy Kellino and starring Elizabeth Sellars, Patrick Holt and Peter Reynolds. [2] In the film, a woman is haunted by her conscience after she kills a man and hides the body. It is based on the 1943 novel You're Best Alone by Norah Lofts.
Jamie (Reynolds) is the getaway driver for a gang of robbers, but when the robbery goes wrong he drives off and makes his way by car and then train to a rural village, Welford, in Devon, where his estranged uncle, Kit (Holt), lives alone. Although Kit is not particularly pleased to see Jamie, he allows him to stay for a couple of days.
A couple of days' stopover turns into an indefinite period, as Jamie, all the while sneering at Kit's rural life, gets a job (or is it a partnership?) at the local garage and eats Kit out of house and home. Things get momentarily worse for Kit as Jamie's estranged wife Linda (Sellars) turns up, hoping for reconciliation, but although Kit is wary of another unwanted guest at first, Linda is far more amenable than Jamie, whose attention has been diverted away by Betty (Morris), a single woman in the village whom he starts an affair with.
Jamie is found to be stealing from Kit as well as the garage and when Linda confronts him he assaults her, and she kills him accidentally in an act of self-defence. Kit and Linda decide to hide the body, which draws them even closer together, and after telling the few people that are interested that Jamie has left the farm, life continues as before with Kit and Linda having fallen in love. Linda is still haunted by memories of Jamie however, and the situation becomes worse when Jamie's mother Eva (Avice Landone) arrives unexpectedly to see Jamie.
Linda suffers something akin to a nervous breakdown, and the local doctor called to assist becomes suspicious at Linda's condition and actions, and calls the police. The police arrive and search for Jamie's body but are unable to find it, and are about to leave, when Linda's conscience gets the better of her and she calls them back to the house, presumably to make a complete confession and face the consequences, with Kit by her side.
This departs from the plot of the original Norah Lofts novel, with its far more appropriate title, You're Best Alone, in which it is Kit who accidentally kills Jamie, and is in love with pathetic Linda. Her subsequent pregnancy is certainly Jamie's though she tells naïve Kit it is his. Her extravagant and extreme fear of childbirth leads her to a kind of emotional breakdown in which she tells police that Kit murdered her husband Jamie. The body is not found, but Kit commits suicide, alone with his beloved dog who he shoots first, reasoning she is too old to take to a new master. His note absolves Linda completely though she was certainly complicit. He does this for love of her, and for Jamie whom he disliked and disapproved of, but who was his much-loved sister's son and who was nothing as glamorous as a getaway driver, but rather a middle class, though seedy, con man. The book is a genuine tragedy.
An early shot is of the Torbay Express at Paddington and the scene then shifts to a shot of a down express at Coryton's Cove, Dawlish. There follow many scenes shot at Ashburton with Tillingham's garage being located next door to the site of the former Golden Lion hotel. Linda arrives by train at Staverton railway station where steam engines still run on the South Devon Railway (heritage railway) but the shot of her leaving the station jumps back to Ashburton. Recognisable coastal scenes are in Torquay where Thatcher's Rock, Hope's Nose and Long Quarry Point under Wall's Hill all appear in shot. The outdoor shots of the farmhouse were at Whitedell Farm, Sarratt, Hertfordshire
The internal scenes are not very convincing representations of rural Devon architecture.
Allmovie wrote, "setting this one apart from other British crime mellers of the era was the decision to film on location in a remote rural community. A passable timefiller when first released, Guilt is My Shadow ended up a staple of American TV in the 1950s and 1960s." [3]
Holiday Inn is a 1942 American musical film starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, with Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale, and Walter Abel. It was directed by Mark Sandrich with music by Irving Berlin. The composer wrote twelve songs specifically for the film, the best known being "White Christmas". The film features a complete reuse of the song "Easter Parade", written by Berlin for the 1933 Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer and used as a highlight of the 1948 film, Easter Parade starring Astaire and Judy Garland. The film's choreography was by Danny Dare.
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. However, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work", and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
A facial is a sexual activity in which a man ejaculates semen onto the face of one or more sexual partners. A facial is a form of non-penetrative sex, though it is generally performed after some other means of sexual stimulation, such as vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex or masturbation. Facials are regularly portrayed in pornographic films and videos, often as a way to close a scene.
Being Julia is a 2004 comedy-drama film directed by István Szabó and starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons. The screenplay by Ronald Harwood is based on the novel Theatre (1937) by W. Somerset Maugham. The original film score was composed by Mychael Danna.
The Getaway is a 1994 American action thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson. The screenplay was written by Walter Hill and Amy Holden Jones, based on Jim Thompson’s 1958 novel of the same name. The film stars Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, with Michael Madsen, James Woods, and Jennifer Tilly in supporting roles.
Just Friends is a 2005 American Christmas comedy film directed by Roger Kumble, written by Adam 'Tex' Davis and starring Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart, Anna Faris, Chris Klein and Christopher Marquette. The plot focuses on a formerly obese high school student (Reynolds) who attempts to free himself from the friend zone after reconnecting with his best friend (Smart) whom he is in love with while visiting his hometown for Christmas.
The Blood on Satan's Claw is a 1971 British supernatural horror film directed by Piers Haggard and starring Patrick Wymark, Linda Hayden, and Barry Andrews. Set in early 18th-century England, it follows the residents of a rural village whose youth fall under the influence of a demonic presence after a local farmer unearths a mysterious deformed skull buried in a field.
The Seduction is a 1982 American thriller film written and directed by David Schmoeller, and starring Morgan Fairchild, Michael Sarrazin, Vince Edwards, and Andrew Stevens. Its plot follows a Los Angeles news anchor who is aggressively pursued by an obsessive male stalker. The original music score was composed by Lalo Schifrin. Reviews for the film have mainly been negative which resulted in three Razzie nominations, including two for Fairchild.
Elizabeth Macdonald Sellars was a Scottish actress.
Wild Rebels is a 1967 film directed by William Grefe and starring Steve Alaimo as Rod Tillman, a stock car driver who goes undercover as the wheelman for a motorcycle gang. The tagline for the film was "They live for kicks... love for kicks... kill for kicks".
"Knight of the Phoenix" is the syndication title to the two-hour long pilot to the popular 1980s television show Knight Rider, which starred David Hasselhoff, Edward Mulhare, Richard Basehart, and William Daniels. It first aired September 26, 1982, and was written by Glen A. Larson and directed by Daniel Haller. The pilot was rebroadcast as a two-part episode during further broadcast syndication.
A Perfect Getaway is a 2009 American thriller film written and directed by David Twohy and starring Timothy Olyphant, Milla Jovovich, Kiele Sanchez, and Steve Zahn. Olyphant, Jovovich, Sanchez, and Zahn portray a group of vacationing couples in Hawaii who find their lives in danger when murders begin to occur on the island, leading to suspicions over one of the couples being the killers.
An Alligator Named Daisy is a 1955 British comedy film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Donald Sinden, Jeannie Carson, James Robertson Justice, Diana Dors, Roland Culver and Stanley Holloway.
This Is My Street is a 1963 British black and white kitchen sink drama film directed by Sidney Hayers and starring Ian Hendry, June Ritchie, Avice Landone, John Hurt and Meredith Edwards. The screenplay is by Bill MacIlwraith from a novel by Nan Maynard. It concerns a bored housewife living in a run-down inner city London house who begins an affair with her mother's lodger, who lives next door.
The Franchise Affair is a 1951 British thriller film directed by Lawrence Huntington and starring Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, Anthony Nicholls and Marjorie Fielding. It is a faithful adaptation of the novel The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey.
The Change-Up is a 2011 American fantasy romantic comedy film produced and directed by David Dobkin, written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and starring Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman.
Who Killed Teddy Bear is a 1965 American neo-noir crime thriller film, directed by Joseph Cates and starring Sal Mineo, Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray and Elaine Stritch. The film was written by Arnold Drake and Leon Tokatyan.
A Desert Wooing is a 1918 American drama silent film directed by Jerome Storm and written by J.G. Hawks. The film stars Enid Bennett, Jack Holt, Donald MacDonald, J. P. Lockney and Charles Spere. The film was released on June 23, 1918, by Paramount Pictures. The film has been preserved and was released on DVD format in 2012. It was the screen debut of actress Irene Rich in an uncredited role.
Rabid Dogs is a 2015 Franco-Canadian crime thriller film written and directed by Éric Hannezo and starring Lambert Wilson, Guillaume Gouix and Virginie Ledoyen. It is a remake of the 1974 film of the same name. It was screened as part of the Cinéma de la Plage programme at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
On 28 March 1991 a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, shot dead three Catholic civilians at a mobile shop in Craigavon, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The gunman boarded the van and shot two teenage girls working there, then forced a male customer to lie on the pavement and shot him also. The killings were claimed by the "Protestant Action Force", who alleged the mobile shop was owned by an Irish republican. Staff said they had been harassed by Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers for not serving them.