Movies : Mystery : TV Rip : English
One of Henry Hathaway's lesser known but arguably best films was 23 Paces To Baker Street, a fairly modest American mystery thriller shot set in London and having nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes despite the title.
With 23 Paces To Baker Street, Hathaway turned away from pure noir into more Hitchcockian territory, and indeed the film bears some comparison with Rear Window. In Hitchcock's film, James Stewart plays a photographer, debilitated by a broken leg, who gets embroiled in a mystery after witnessing incidents in the apartments opposite his own. Here, Van Johnson stars as a playwright debilitated by blindness, who gets embroiled in a mystery after overhearing part of a conversation.
The film's opening shots introduce one of its greatest strengths and pleasures - that 1950s London setting. A slow pan takes in the Thames and Waterloo Bridge with traffic pouring over and under it. It's dawn and the river is shrouded in orange-tinged mist, ably captured by the veteran cinematographer Milton R Krasner. The pan ends at the flat of playwright Philip Hannon. He has an amazing view but can't enjoy it. Instead, he describes it bitterly to Jean (Miles), the fianc�e he abandoned after "it happened". She gently chides him for sounding bitter, to which he replies "Bitter? Me? I'm a successful playwright who's just had a hit, a big hit. What have I got to be bitter about? I'm alright as long as people leave me alone." He then storms out - as fast as a recently blinded man can - to go to the pub.
While out, Philip, who is developing the legendary acute hearing of the blind, overhears part of a conversation which he believes to concern the kidnapping of a child. However, when he tries to inform both friends and the authorities, his stories are dismissed, taken to be as fictional as his own writings. So instead, Philip relies on his own intuition and the assistance of Bob (Matthews), his butler-cum-secretary and Jean, the lovelorn fianc�e who won't give up on the man she loves despite his belligerence and self-pity. Indeed, the mystery is just what Philip needs to shake him out of his stupor. Alas, this puts his companions - who race around London following his investigations and hunches - in peril, and leads to him having to face off against a villain he can't see.
All of this adds up to a film that's compelling, presages other blind protagonist characters of later film and TV (see Wait Until Dark and the series 'Longstreet'), and offers a marvellous document of 1950s London. Hathaway eloquently manages both the visual aspect and the story, which was adapted from Philip MacDonald's 1938 novel 'Warrant For X' by Nigel Balchin, the British writer responsible for The Man Who Never Was.
A US-made, London-set Henry Hathaway film that deserves to be better know than it is, and vies with Rear Window for one of the more novel mystery thrillers of the mid-1950s.
