The Long Dark Hall

This 1951 suspense courtroom drama, based on the novel ‘A Case To Answer’ by E. Lustgarten, boasts some terrific b/w photography by Wilkie Cooper but is let down by a rather illogical plot in which a cuckolded wife stands by her lying and cheating husband even when he’s accused of murder. Then again, the film’s stars Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer were a real-life couple at the time of filming and no doubt this contributed to the on-screen loyalty.

The film begins with a brief epilogue in which two men in an office discuss various court cases. One of the men is obviously a reporter, the other appears to be a writer of crime fiction looking for inspiration for his current book project. The reporter mentions the case of Arthur Groome, after which the story is told in flashback.
Arthur Groome (R. Harrison) seems a happily married man who lives with his doting wife Mary (L. Palmer) and two young daughters in a charming little house in the suburbs of London. In fact, throughout the film Arthur keeps pointing out how much he loves his wife, so there is no reason for him to start an affair but that’s exactly what he does. The girl in question is a ‘revue girl’ called Rose Mallory (Patricia Cutts) with whom Arthur becomes obsessed after having met her in a bar frequented by theatre folk. His wife assumes that her husband is doing overtime in the office and because she’s not only so very nice and loving but also so very gullible and naïve she never questions his constant ‘overtime’ even once! One evening, Arthur decides to visit Rose in her rented room after an earlier row with the ‘object of his desire’: Rose got fed up with his jealous behaviour as well as keeping an eye on her all the time to make sure she doesn’t go astray with another lover. He should talk!

That very night, however, Rose doesn’t answer the door when Arthur knocks after having let himself into the boarding house with a key that Rose gave him. When he enters the room he finds the young girl on the floor, stabbed to death with a knife. Unfortunately for him, minutes earlier the keeper of the dodgy establishment, Mrs. Rogers (Brenda De Banzie), confronted Arthur in the hallway over his late visit - so no prices for guessing that he turns out to be the prime suspect. What Mrs. Rogers doesn’t know is that prior to Arthur’s visit, a stranger entered the house (which by then was still unlocked) and killed Rose – in fact, only a few weeks before he killed a young woman in an dark alley way after following her from the theatre’s stage door. This scene is particularly eerie, courtesy of Wilkie Cooper’s dramatic photography. Soon, the trial begins and Arthur denies to ever have known a girl by the name of Rose Mallory. When the murder weapon turns out to be the very knife which Arthur once lent the dead girl so she could open parcels, things look increasingly bad for him. He has no other choice then to admit to an affair. Nonetheless, wife Mary stands by him – seemingly the only person convinced of his innocence. Meanwhile, a peculiar and outwardly slightly sinister man (Anthony Dawson) claims to live in the Groomes’ neighbourhood and offers his support and friendship to an initially grateful Mary. Soon though, the man turns out to be disturbed and keeps on talking about the ‘perfect family’ and the ‘perfect home’ and how Mary would do wise to forget about her cheating husband. Shocked, she asks the stranger to leave, not knowing that he is in fact the real killer. A race against time ensues to save Arthur from the gallows, but the odds don’t look promising…

This thriller about one man’s obsession and another man’s thirst for ridding the world of all that stands in the way of a harmonious family life delivers strong performances from all the cast though it has to be said that Rex Harrison did always come across as simply ‘too nice’ to be a cheat obsessed with a struggling show girl.