Multi-story Ealing film (unfairly criticised - in both George Perry's Ealing book and by Time Out - as a substandard replication of Dead of Night) linked together by a fateful journey of the Euston-Liverpool express, begins in a very modern way - with a dramatic train crash, followed by the title "Three days earlier" - a staple device of modern TV dramas.
The intercut stores aren't actually titled on-screen. They are:
"Engine Driver" (director Sidney Cole). Our familiar and beloved Ealing staple, the nice working-class family, Jack Warden, Gladys Henson and Susan Shaw as the daughter. With Miles Malleson and Leslie Phillips (missed him again!) Reality of working for British Rail well caught.
"Prisoner of War" (d. Basil Dearden). Joan Dowling loves on-the-run tragic German Laurence Payne. Can they escape their succession of truly grotty digs?
"The Composer" (d. Charles Crichton) is Raymond Hillary; Valerie Hobson has fun playing his far too understanding wife; Irina Baranova is the other woman. The music 'The Legend of Lancelot' is not Rachmaninov but written for the film by Leslie Bridgewater. Amusingly saucy conversation in musical metaphors.
"The Actor" (d. Basil Dearden) is the screen debut of Peter Finch whose war has left him hardened to philandering wife Mary Morris; with Laurence Naismith and Michael Hordern.
The writers are TEB Clarke, Dearden, Angus MacPhail and Ronald Miller and the stories of tatty post WW2 England hold up well, though they don't integrate, and there are many good touches of script ("That boy's going far") and effect (Trafalgar Square / Underground sequence).
Would a film like this work now?
Photographers are Gordon Dines, Lionel Banes and Paul Beeson.
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