Women of Twilight

Based on the 1951 play by Sylvia Rayman, this 1952 film adaptation was the first British film to receive an X certificate – by nowadays liberal standards a trifle hard to understand perhaps but back in postwar Britain, the idea of unmarried young women who were pregnant was enough to send the morality police into overdrive and further contributed to the widespread prejudice.

It isn’t difficult to see why the play would have caused some controversy at the time, bearing in mind the subject matter. This controversy also followed the film version which – by and large – remained truthful to the play, albeit with an extraneous part added for a very young Laurence Harvey. Here he plays (badly dubbed) nightclub singer Jerry Nolan whose latest squeeze Vivianne Bruce (Rene Ray – then seventeen years Harvey’s senior) visits him at the club where he is serenading the guests. After his performance, she follows Jerry to his dressing room where he confesses to her that he has committed murder and as it so happens, minutes later the police promptly arrive and arrest him.

The unfortunate Vivianne's name is now all over the headlines - as she IS the murderer's girlfriend it would seem that the public in general regard her as every bit as bad as he is. No price for guessing that she gets booted out of her lodgings! It hardly helps that she is also pregnant (with her lover about to be hanged). Indeed, fate has hardly dealt Vivianne a fair hand! We next witness the luckless Vivianne traipsing the streets of London trying to find accommodation - and you can be assured no one wants to put a murderer’s girlfriend up. Finally, she finds an ad in a shop that is NOT asking for references. Enter odious landlady Helen Allistair (played by Freda Jackson who had by this time virtually cornered the market in her portrayals of harsh and unsympathetic types). It takes no time at all before we know that very few will be deceived by this woman's initial kindly greeting.

Vivianne soon realises that she too has been hoodwinked and she isn't even going to get a room of her own. The 'kindly' Miss Allistair informs that her that the house is overcrowded mainly on account of her putting up women that no else will. And beggars are hardly in a position to be choosers. It is downstairs that she meets the equally appalling fag-in-mouth ‘vulgarian’ Jess Smithson (major plaudits here for Vida Hope) - a dowdy and poor excuse for a human being. Smithson is to an extent in cahoots with the wicked landlady. Just what lies in store for Vivianne almost beggar's belief. This so-called lodging house is run more like a reform school and Vivianne is to share a room with Smithson and yet another new arrival, Christine Ralston (played by willowy Lois ‘Miss Moneypenny’ Maxwell) who is a nice respectable girl. So, what's a nice respectable girl like her doing in a place like this? Yes, you may have guessed it - she's an unmarried mother… She is also somewhat taken aback when she realises that she too has to share a room with two others and her baby.

Also on board we have Olga Lambert (Dora Bryan) up to her usual upstaging 'tricks' who is well onto Ms. Alistair's nasty little manoeuvres: “You won’t get away with it this time”! Soon we’ll discover what she meant by this telling remark. This far from respectable boarding house is virtually a house of bloody horrors, run by a landlady who thinks nothing of ‘baby farming’, blackmail, thieving... you name it. Any woman staying at this establishment needs to be pretty tough and they have to contend with bully girl Smithson to boot. Oh, what on earth has poor Vivianne let herself in for - just as well she's pretty tough but no one should underestimate a woman like Helen Allistair.

This is quite a remarkable piece and richly deserves a re-appraisal. It is also a pity that Rayman's piece had to be watered down lest it cause too much offence - the word 'rape' had to be omitted for example. We could also have done without Harvey's badly dubbed singer - but it being 1952 we had to have at least one man in it, didn't we? The performances are very impressive all round (not a weak one on show) but Vida Hope's ‘Jess Smithson’ was for this reviewer the most memorable part. Who said women couldn't be as horrible as men? Gordon Parry does a fair job of holding the director's reins – well, there weren’t many female director's around at the time except for Wendy Toye.

WOMEN OF TWILIGHT has just been released in a brand-new 4K restoration on Blu-ray and Bonus material includes: ‘Melanie Williams on Women Of Twilight’ / ‘From Stage to Screen: Interview with Marc David Jacobs / Stills gallery