Escape

Matt Denant, a former air force flier, strikes a plain clothes policeman who is trying to detain a woman he had been talking to in the park; the man falls and dies. Denant is given three years and sent to Dartmoor, but finding the sentence unjust he escapes at the first opportunity and hides out in the countryside. While Inspector Harris of Scotland Yard comes after him, Denant takes refuge in the house of Sir James Winton, whose daughter Dora agrees to hide him. What follows turns less into a chase than into a reckoning of conscience: even if the escape is justified, someone has to lie. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s seventy eight minute film was adapted from John Galsworthy’s play Escape with a screenplay by Philip Dunne and cinematography by Freddie Young. Rex Harrison plays Denant and Peggy Cummins plays Dora; it was completed in 1948.