The Halfway House

A group of travellers arrives at an old inn in the Welsh countryside. Each of them is hiding something: an illness, a crime, a marriage about to end. The innkeeper and his daughter greet them without the slightest surprise. But every newspaper in the place is a year old, and Gwyneth casts no shadow. Basil Dearden made this Ealing film in 1944, in the middle of the war, and uses the supernatural without ever preaching: it offers people a second chance and is clear that the chance is not free. Mervyn Johns and Glynis Johns, who play the innkeeper and his daughter, were father and daughter in life as well. It is one of the most graceful ghost stories in British cinema.