Finger of Guilt (1956)

Really Surprised!

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's bad enough when your past catches up to you, but it's even worse when somebody else's idea of what your past should be catches up to you.Richard Basehart is a movie maker. A scandal back in the states has driven him to begin a new career in England. That's a plot that should have resonated with the director, Joseph Losey. Basehart's current project is expensive and dicey and the studio is on edge about overruns and expensive costumes.Then Basehart, a happily married man, begins to get loving letters reminding him of a past romance from a woman named Evelyn. That would be Mary Murphy. Basehart, already tense, his reputation as a womanizer haunting his reputation, becomes an unhappily harried man and is driven to see a shrink, who is of no help.He tracks down Mary Murphy and she insists that her story is real, that they had a passionate affair in New York and he'd promised her a job if she came to England. Everything she says rings true. She even convinced the police. He loses his job, his wife leaves him, and he develops a monster hangnail. Either she's lying, for reasons no one can discern, or Basehart is some kind of multiple personality. I won't give away the ending.Basehart is a likable guy. He LOOKS like a reliable Mid-Western type, but his best roles have involved twisted characters. Mary Murphy is a beautiful woman. She was a winsome small-town girl in "The Wild Ones." But here she's not up to the demands of a bitchy, self-serving manipulator. And grooming doesn't help. They've given her a severe hair style and dressed her in "sophisticated" black outfits with some kind of girdle or foundation garment underneath that has pinched her waist into nullity and caused her rear to look cantilevered.Joseph Losey's direction is straightforward for the most part. What isn't strictly functional -- a fist fight shown by shadows on a wall -- isn't too original. And the violent ending seems excessive, with a pudgy and middle-aged Mervyn Johns being knocked about the room by a furious Basehart.

****SPOILERS****British film executive Reggie Wilson, Richard Basehart, is about to commit himself into the "Funny Farm" because of all these letters he's been getting postage marked New Castle from this woman Evelyn Stewart, Mary Murphy, claiming that he had a hot and heavy affair with her back in New York some five years ago. Not remembering a thing about this supposed affair Reggie feeling he's being blackmailed goes to New Castle to confront Evelyn and finally get to the bottom of all this mental anguish he's being put through. Going to New Castle with his wife-a really bad idea-Lesley,Faith Brooke, it become apparent to everyone his wife the police as well as himself that there's some truth to Evelyn's accusations about his affair with her even though Reggie can't remember a thing about it!With the head of the studio as well as his father-in-law Ben Case, not Ben Casey of the 1960's TV series,played by Roger Livesey giving Reggie a forced leave of absence he take a trip to the studio to both chill out and get his act together! It's then that everything comes together for him when he spots Evelyn showing up there for a job as if it's some kind of pay off by Case in her driving him nutty! What turns out is that Evelyn got her wires crossed in thinking that Case was behind all this manipulating poor Reggie's head! And that's when Reggie finally found who's been pulling the strings to get him kicked out of his job and end up in the loony bin!****SPOILERS**** Wild final with Reggie finding out and exposing, with a hidden microphone, the person behind his troubles with his father-in-law and boss Ben Case listening in. Evelyn soon realizing that she somehow has been set up to be the pasty in all this takes a powder only to be caught as she tries to make a quick getaway form the studio grounds. As for the person who set Reggie up he tries to gun him down only to find out that the sub-machine, which he should have known, that he tried to blast him with was only a harmless movie prop!

This movie, a cynical look at betrayal in the film industry, was directed by someone who had first hand knowledge - Joseph Losey. With a great blend of British actors (Roger Livesey, Mervyn Johns and Faith Brook, who I had just seen a few days before in a superb British "Thriller" episode "In the Steps of a Dead Man") and a couple of American ex-pats - Richard Basehart and Constance Cummings, it is a nicely paced "who done it" set behind the scenes at a British film studio (Shepparton Studios).Film producer, Reggie Wilson (Richard Basehart) is worried he may have a dual personality. Fleeing Hollywood, he finds himself in England and married to the bosses' daughter (Faith Brook) after which he quickly rises through the studio ranks. Then the letters appear.... from a love sick fan (he thinks) who wants to know why he has thrown her over. Meanwhile, his father-in-law "Big Ben" is worried about the money being poured into the studio's first big budget movie and is demanding cuts!! On top of which, imported leading lady Kay Wallace (Constance Cummings) realises she is not right for the role and is being a prima donna.Mary Murphy bought a quiet intensity to her acting but even though she was in films for two decades, the only time she really stood out was as the shy girl who gave hope to Marlon Brando in "The Wild One". Here she had a more conventional role as Evelyn Stewart, the duplicitous letter writer. She handled the part well but I will always remember her beauty - why wasn't she better known!!! Being a Joseph Losey ("The Prowler", "The Servant") picture, you couldn't fault it and when Reggie starts to put two and two together to add up to just who Evelyn Stewart really was, the pace really picks up.Constance Cummings was an under rated American actress ("The Criminal Code") who went to England in the mid thirties as so many did whose careers were stalling, but unlike many, made good and decided to stay.Highly Recommended.

This has to be one of the most unrealistic movies that ever came down the pike. It may have been unintentional but the irony of setting something largely in a film studio, i.e. a place where they manufacture unreality, and then portraying that studio as a neglected corner of a run-down industrial estate is priceless. Richard Basehart as head of the studio has an office about as prepossessing as that of a minor official in Eastern Europe in the late sixties and that of his father-in-law and movie mogul Roger Livesey is superior only in the sense that it boasts superior oilcloth on the floor. The story, by Howard Koch, who - unbelievably on this showing - co-scripted Casablanca, is so clearly a metaphor for the Blacklist (both Koch and director Losey, were victims and worked here under John Does) that it becomes risible which it shouldn't do because there were many innocent victims 'accused' of things they hadn't done during the HUAC years and the denouement involving Mervyn Johns is pathetic. Losey completists will want to see it but of you're not one stay home and watch Big Brother.