Film 2014 : The Big Chance (1957)
William Russell stars in this brisk and entertaining crime escapade, written and directed by Peter Graham Scott. “How many people live as they want? How many people just drift, caught by the tide, unable to change their course?” he muses wistfully, looking out over the Thames at the Battersea Power Station. He’s Bill Anderson, disillusioned with his marriage and his job (as an assistant manager in an ABTA approved travel agency.) His wife doesn’t understand his dream of life on a trading schooner, or indeed his need to carve a model of one at the dinner table. But what if he could leave everything behind - flee under a new identity to, say, Panama… ?
There’s a fraught, improvisational quality to Bill’s plan, which involves passport duplication, two identical briefcases, and being able to cadge the combination of the safe from his manager. (Eric Spear’s music during the safe sequence both ratchets up the tension, and anticipates the Dalek City pulsating soundscape.) I was impressed by how well Peter Graham Scott and William Russell maintained the suspense - Bill is just moments away from boarding his plane - but the plot demands a femme fatale, and there are few finer than Adrienne Corri as Diana Maxwell. Femme fatale is perhaps the wrong term - Diana is also fleeing an unhappy marriage, and her chance meeting with Bill at the airport wrecks her plans as much as his.
To reveal more would be unfair, given the brief running time, but there are some lovely scenes in a country cottage that are just a side-step away from similar Ian / Barbara exchanges in Who. My fellow viewer, Mrs Fen, also enjoyed it - “It didn’t go in any of the directions that I was expecting”.
As with The Blue Parrot, Edwin Richfield and Ferdy Mayne are present and correct, and as with The Blue Parrot, the film is available on DVD and also a popular video upload website.
Next Episode : The Clouded Yellow
There’s a fraught, improvisational quality to Bill’s plan, which involves passport duplication, two identical briefcases, and being able to cadge the combination of the safe from his manager. (Eric Spear’s music during the safe sequence both ratchets up the tension, and anticipates the Dalek City pulsating soundscape.) I was impressed by how well Peter Graham Scott and William Russell maintained the suspense - Bill is just moments away from boarding his plane - but the plot demands a femme fatale, and there are few finer than Adrienne Corri as Diana Maxwell. Femme fatale is perhaps the wrong term - Diana is also fleeing an unhappy marriage, and her chance meeting with Bill at the airport wrecks her plans as much as his.
To reveal more would be unfair, given the brief running time, but there are some lovely scenes in a country cottage that are just a side-step away from similar Ian / Barbara exchanges in Who. My fellow viewer, Mrs Fen, also enjoyed it - “It didn’t go in any of the directions that I was expecting”.
As with The Blue Parrot, Edwin Richfield and Ferdy Mayne are present and correct, and as with The Blue Parrot, the film is available on DVD and also a popular video upload website.
Next Episode : The Clouded Yellow