Girl in the News

Anne, a nurse accused of poisoning after a patient's death, is acquitted in court but not cleared in reputation. She cannot find work. Eventually she takes a post caring for an old man, and he dies too. The same charge, the same courtroom, a second time. The film is not interested in murder. It is interested in the impossibility of clearing a name once suspected: it shows that a legal acquittal is socially worth nothing, and in the second case Anne's room to defend herself narrows further. The form is British studio crime: a courtroom, job interviews, a country house and night scenes. Short running time, high tempo. Carol Reed directed. He was making small thrillers one after another in this period, and these films are considered where he accumulated the command that would take him to The Third Man a few years later. Margaret Lockwood plays Anne; she was among the biggest female box-office draws in British cinema of those years. Emlyn Williams is also in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like forties British thrillers and courtroom films. Who it is not for: anyone after surprise. Who is guilty becomes clear early and the tension rests only on when the evidence will surface.