According to the streaming services, this movie was directed by Joseph Losey, which makes it automatically a movie of interest. I gave it a watch, and found that producer Alex C. Snowden was credited with the direction. The explanation: Losey, (who had begun a promising career in Hollywood with movies that included The Boy with Green Hair, 1948) was summoned in 1951 by the House Un-American Activities Committee in charge of "rooting out Communism" from the movie industry. Rather than being a victim of the Committee's well known extortion and intimidation tactics, Losey sought exile in the UK. He was not totally free of persecution in his new country; at the time (as today) the Brits were intent on pleasing their American overlords and Losey was closely watched since his arrival and had to use a pseudonym in the first movies he directed in the UK (his travails are shown in Irwin Winkler's movie Guilty by Suspicion, 1991 where Martin Scorsese plays a character based on Losey). However, he managed to establish himself gradually in the British studios and ended up directing numerous movies in the UK and in France, some of them masterpieces like Mr. Klein (1976).
The subject of this movie is the stalking of Reggie Wilson, (an American director working in a London studio, and married to his boss' daughter) by a woman that claims to be his former lover. Wilson denies the claim but the skillful direction and the script by Howard Koch keep us guessing until the very end who is telling the truth. Koch, of Casablanca fame was blacklisted in 1951 after being denounced by Jack L Warner as a Communist sympathizer. The same as Losey he found work in the British cinema although he also had to use a pseudonym for a while (in this movie he "is" Peter Howard). As in many other films of the genre, the climax is perhaps a little bit of a letdown. Losey and Koch show a realistic, gritty view of the inner workings of a movie studio, a subject very familiar to both. Richard Basehart plays the not/so/lovable Wilson flawlessly and the other actors are as good. Whatever its (very few) faults this is a movie worth watching. One wishes for a restored copy with straightened out credits.
The subject of this movie is the stalking of Reggie Wilson, (an American director working in a London studio, and married to his boss' daughter) by a woman that claims to be his former lover. Wilson denies the claim but the skillful direction and the script by Howard Koch keep us guessing until the very end who is telling the truth. Koch, of Casablanca fame was blacklisted in 1951 after being denounced by Jack L Warner as a Communist sympathizer. The same as Losey he found work in the British cinema although he also had to use a pseudonym for a while (in this movie he "is" Peter Howard). As in many other films of the genre, the climax is perhaps a little bit of a letdown. Losey and Koch show a realistic, gritty view of the inner workings of a movie studio, a subject very familiar to both. Richard Basehart plays the not/so/lovable Wilson flawlessly and the other actors are as good. Whatever its (very few) faults this is a movie worth watching. One wishes for a restored copy with straightened out credits.