The Third Secret (Charles Crichton, 1964)

The Third Secret (Charles Crichton, 1964)

Cast: Stephen Boyd, Pamela Franklin, Richard Attenborough, Diane Cilento, Jack Hawkins, Paul Rogers, Alan Webb, Rachel Kempson, Peter Sallis, Patience Collier, Freda Jackson, Judi Dench, Peter Copley. Screenplay: Robert L. Joseph. Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe. Production design: Thomas N. Morahan. Film editing: Frederick Wilson. Music: Richard Arnell.

The Third Secret is a moderately engaging whodunit probably most remembered today as Judi Dench's first movie. She plays the assistant to a gallery owner, Alfred Price-Gorham (Richard Attenborough), who becomes a suspect in the murder of a psychoanalyst, Dr. Leo Whitset (Peter Copley). Actually, Whitset's death was ruled a suicide until Alex Stedman (Stephen Boyd), an American who is a well-known commentator on British TV news, rejects the idea that Whitset, who was his analyst, could have killed himself. So Stedman starts snooping, aided by Whitset's precocious young daughter, Catherine (Pamela Franklin), who also doesn't believe her father could have committed suicide. She knows the names and addresses of Whitset's other clients, who include not only Price-Gorham but also a beautiful but neurotic young woman, Anne Tanner (Diane Cilento), and a distinguished judge, Sir Frederick Belline (Jack Hawkins). Stedman figures that each of them had a motive for killing Whitset, to keep the secrets they had confided in their analyst from becoming known. Naturally, complications ensue, and there are some mildly shocking twists before the truth -- the titular "third secret" -- comes out. Dench's few brief moments on film hardly make it worth seeking out, but it has the familiar comfortable quality of British mysteries and some nice black-and-white Cinemascope camera direction by Douglas Slocombe.

A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)

David Niven and Marius Goring in A Matter of Life and Death

Peter D. Carter: David Niven 

June: Kim Hunter 

Bob Trubshaw: Robert Coote 

An Angel: Kathleen Byron 

An English Pilot: Richard Attenborough

An American Pilot: Bonar Colleano 

Chief Recorder: Joan Maude 

Conductor 71: Marius Goring 

Dr. Frank Reeves: Roger Livesey 

Abraham Farlan: Raymond Massey 

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger 

Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger 

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff 

Production design: Alfred Junge 

Fantasy, especially in British hands, can easily go twee, and though Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had surer hands than most, A Matter of Life and Death (released in the United States as Stairway to Heaven, long before Led Zeppelin) still manages occasionally to tip over toward whimsy. There is, for example, the symbolism-freighted naked boy playing a flute while herding goats, the doctor's rooftop camera obscura from which he spies on the villagers, and the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream being rehearsed by recovering British airmen. And there's Marius Goring's simpering Frenchman, carrying on as no French aristocrat, even one guillotined during the Reign of Terror, ever did. Many find this hodgepodge delicious, and A Matter of Life and Death is still one of the most beloved of British movies, at least in Britain. I happen to be among those who find it a bit too much, but I can readily appreciate many things about it, including Jack Cardiff's Technicolor cinematography (Earth is color, Heaven black and white, a clever switch on the Kansas/Oz twist in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz) and Alfred Junge's production design. On the whole, it seems to me too heavily freighted with message -- Love Conquers Even Death -- to be successful, but it must have been a soothing message to a world recovering from a war.