Time Without Pity

Everyone has a secret. It's not always written in the face.

Time Without Pity is directed by Joseph Losey and adapted to screenplay by Ben Barzman from the Emlyn Williams play Someone Waiting. It stars Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd, Leo McKern, Paul Daneman, Peter Cushing, Alec McCowen, Renee Houston and Lois Maxwell. Music is by Tristram Cary and cinematography by Freddie Francis.

David Graham (Redgrave) is a recovering alcoholic who comes out of the sanitarium to try and prove his son is innocent of murder. His son, Alec (McCowen), is to be hanged in 24 hours for the slaying of his girlfriend. David finds he is constantly met with brick walls and his sobriety is tested at every turn, but salvation may lie with the suspicious Stanford family...

Blacklisted in America, Joseph Losey went to the UK and made a number of films under various pseudonyms, Time Without Pity marked the first time he would put his own name to the production. It's also a film that stands tall as another of Losey's excellent British offerings.

Losey and his team do not make a murder mystery, from the off we see who the killer is and it's not young Alec Graham. This is a device that in the wrong hands has often over the years proved costly, where viewers looking for suspense have been sorely short changed. What happens here is that we are privy to an investigation by a man in misery, battling his demons as he frantically searches for redemption.

Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

Shunned by his estranged son, who would rather be hanged for a crime he didn't commit than accept his "waster" father's help - that might in turn give him false hope, David Graham is a haunted being who is closer to solving the case than he knows. This brings us viewers tantalisingly into the play, we know who it is, we can see how they react around David and how the other players who are hiding something also behave from scene to scene. The script never looses focus, it constantly keeps a grip on the tension as the...