Time Without Pity

After being blacklisted in America, Joseph Losey moved to Britain. He had made his previous film, The Sleeping Tiger, under the pseudonym Victor Hanbury, because the actors feared being found to have worked with him. This is the first he signed with his own name. David Graham, played by Michael Redgrave, is an alcoholic writer who leaves treatment and comes to London twenty-four hours before his son is to be executed for murder. He has neither evidence nor time; he is only trying not to drink and to find the killer. The most striking decision is telling the audience who the murderer is in the opening scene. The tension comes not from solving it but from nobody believing Graham. Losey takes an open position against capital punishment and does not disguise the subject as a whodunnit. Leo McKern, Ann Todd and Peter Cushing are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like British noir and stories built around the death penalty. Who it is not for: anyone wanting mystery, which the film deliberately spends in its first five minutes.