Three Cases of Murder (1953)

Country of Origin: UK
Year of Production: 1953
Running Times: 99 mins
Format: black and white     35mm
Ratio: 1.66:1
Sound: mono

PRODUCTION
Production Company: Wessex Films
Producer: Ian Dalrymple

SCRIPT
Script: Donald B. Wilson (In The Picture); Sidney Carroll, Brett Halliday (You Killed Elizabeth); Ian Dalrymple (Lord Mountdrago)
Stories: Roderick Wilkinson (In the Picture); W. Somerset Maugham (Lord Mountdrago)

DIRECTION
Director: Wendy Toye (In the Picture); David Eady (You Killed Elizabeth); George More O'Ferrall (Lord Mountdrago)

PHOTOGRAPHY
Director of Photography: Georges Périnal
Camera Operator: Denys Coop

EDITING AND POST-PRODUCTION
Editor: Gerald Turney-Smith

MUSIC
Music: Doreen Carwithen

DESIGN AND SET CONSTRUCTION
Production Designer: Paul Sheriff

LOCATIONS
Studio: Shepperton Studios, England, UK

CAST
Introductions
Eamonn Andrews (host)

In the Picture
Alan Badel (Mr X)
Hugh Pryse (Jarvis)
Leueen MacGrath (woman in the house)
Eddie Byrne (Snyder)
Ann Hanslip (the girl)
John Salew (Rooke)
Harry Welchman (connoisseur)

You Killed Elizabeth
John Gregson (Edgar Curtain)
Elizabeth Sellars (Elizabeth)
Emrys Jones (George Wheeler)
Alan Badel (Harry)
Philip Dale (Sgt Mallot)
Christina Forrest (Susan)
Maurice Kaufmann (Pemberton)
Jack Lambert (Inspector Acheson)
Colette Wilde (Jane)

Lord Mountdrago
Orson Welles (Lord Mountdrago)
Alan Badel (Owen)
André Morell (Dr Audlin)
Helen Cherry (Lady Mountdrago)
Peter Burton (Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs)
Evelyn Hall (Lady Connemara)
David Horne (Sir James)
John Humphry (Private Secretary)
Zena Marshall (beautiful blonde)
Arthur Wontner (Leader of the House)

PLOT SUMMARY

An anthology of three stories.

In the Picture: An art gallery tour guide becomes obsessed with a haunting landscape, a gloomy study of a gothic mansion. The tortured painter seems to have become trapped in the painting itself, emerging to seek out the light he needs to complete his work.

You Killed Elizabeth: Two business partners fall in love with the same woman who is forced to choose between them. During an alcohol-induced blackout, however, her new fiancé murders her.

Lord Mountdrago: A politician cruelly destroys a fellow MP's career. The broken man swears vengeance and Mountdrago is bothered by a series of increasingly worrying dreams that eventually lead to murder.

A trilogy of dark and engrossing tales well acted and moodily directed. Wendy Toye had already scored an impressive hit with The Stranger Left No Card (1952), but fails to shine again here thanks in no small part to a sluggish script by Ian Dalrymple, Sidney Carroll and Donald Wilson. George More O'Farrell's Lord Mountdrago is easily the best of the three stories, thanks to a commanding performance from Orson Welles and a quieter but equally impressive one from André Morell as his psychiatrist. But Toye's In the Picture gets proceedings off to an agonisingly slow start. Sandwiched between them is Eady's You Killed Elizabeth, an undistinguished murder mystery with a twist ending that comes out of nowhere and is frankly unbelievable. Somewhat lost now between Dead of Night (1945) and the onset of the Amicus anthologies, the film's chief failing is probably its lack of a strong overall theme. The use of murder as a linking element (and the recurring presence of Alan Badel in each of the stories) lacks the cohesiveness that Dead of Night's structure gave it - even at their worst and most tenuous, the Amicus films usually had a connecting theme that was stronger than this.

UK
Theatrical Distributors: British Lion Films Ltd

USA
Theatrical Distributors: Associated Artists Productions

Finland
Rating: K-16

1953
May
12: UK - theatrical release

August
29: Sweden - theatrical release

1956
May
25: Finland - theatrical release

December
10: USA - television broadcast (on WOR-TV)

1981
June
27: UK - television broadcast (on BBC2)

1985
July
31: UK - television broadcast (on Channel 4)

1987
May
23: UK - television broadcast (on Channel 4)

1995
April
4: UK - television broadcast (on Channel 4)

Kolme murhaa - Finnish title
Tre casi di assassinio - Italian title
Tres casos de homicidio - Venezuelan title

MAGAZINES

Monthly Film Bulletin vol.22 no.258 (July 1955) p.102 (UK)
credits, synopsis, review

Monthly Film Bulletin vol.53 no.632 (September 1986) pp.289-290 (UK)
credits, synopsis, review

Shivers no.36 pp.25-26 (UK)
review

BOOKS

English Gothic (2nd edition) pp.34-35
illustrated review (by Jonathan Rigby)

KEYWORDS

anthologies, art, artists, art galleries, dreams, alcohol, politicians, revenge

Last Updated: 1 January, 2009