Friday the Thirteenth

 (UK)

By VARIETY STAFF

Gainsborough/Gaumont-British. Director Victor Saville; Screenplay Emlyn Williams; Camera Charles Van Enger; Editor R. E. Dearing; Music Louis Levy (dir.); Art Director Alfred Junge, Alex Vetchinsky
 
Sonnie Hale
Jessie Matthews
Edmund Gwenn
Max Miller
Emlyn Williams
Ralph Richardson
 

There's a good idea here and the execution is far from bad. It's a combination Grand Hotel and bus idea [story by C. H. Moresby-White and Sidney Gilliat] that's pretty well thought out.

Opens with a bus going down a London street in a rainstorm. A crash, two people are killed and several wounded. Then the clock goes back over the day of all the passengers that were in the bus, relating the incidents that got them there at the time. All unrelated, of course. But the bus crash fixes things up all around.

There's the chorus girl who's had a spat with her sweetie and, hurt, is en route to keep a date with the fresh guy who's been trying vainly to make her, up to then. There's the blackmailer who's just taken the last money from a poor boy with the threat of returning for more.

There's the henpecked husband, en route home late, after working overtime and not knowing that when he gets home he'll find his wife has run off with another man. There's a wise-cracking and rather sympathetic crook being baited by detectives. So on down the line and none of it boring.

Cast is exceptionally good. Jessie Matthews as the chorine, is best. Frank Lawton and Ursula Jeans don't come out too well, being over-directed and in unfortunate spots. Max Miller impresses nicely in a comedy bit and Ralph Richardson does well by a character bit. Gordon Harker repeats his comedy characterization that brought him attention in Rome Express and Edmund Gwenn and Mary Jerrold both do exceptionally well in character bits.

(B&W) Extract of a review from 1933. Running time: 65 MIN.