10 Rillington Place

An account of a murder case in London and the miscarriage of justice that followed. John Christie lived in a house in Notting Hill in the 1940s and 1950s. A quiet, polite, helpful-seeming man. A young couple moves into the upstairs flat: Timothy Evans, his wife Beryl and their baby. Beryl is pregnant and does not want the child. Christie says he has medical knowledge and offers to help. What follows is the disappearance of the Evans family and Timothy Evans being charged with killing his wife and child. Evans could not read or write, there were contradictions in his statements, and Christie's testimony was decisive at trial. Evans was hanged in 1950. Three years later several bodies were found in the same house and Christie was arrested. The case became one of the most cited examples in the British argument over the abolition of capital punishment. The film was shot on the real street, in a building next to the house where it happened. Richard Attenborough plays Christie and John Hurt plays Evans. Richard Fleischer directed. One of the coolest-headed examples of its kind for anyone who likes true crime and stories of miscarried justice. Before you watch, know this: the film does not try to generate suspense; it shows the events flatly and quietly, and that is where its effect comes from.