Eric Ambler's screenplay - based on Ray Allister (aka Muriel Forth)'s biography - begins at the end of inventor Willy Freise-Greene's life, and shows that he's somewhat screwed it up: he's penniless, unknown and lives apart from his family. We flashback firstly to his second marriage, to Margaret Johnstone, his financial incontinence and the departure of three sons for WWI (how many survive we don't learn - the screenplay's oddly elusive about certain details). Then we go all the way back to his first marriage to Maria Schell and his journey from high society portrait photographer into his experiments with taking moving pictures - an innovation he shows passing policeman Laurence Olivier.
The film was an odd choice to celebrate the Festival of Britain really - the celebration of a failure. More about him and his controversial claims here. It was quite interesting to see the innovations, the creation of celluloid film, for example, but it's an odd little film, really.
Luscious photography from Jack Cardiff.
The film is peppered with guest appearances. Those I did recognise were: Dickie Attenborough, Glynis Johns, Kay Walsh, Margaret Rutherford, William Hartnell, Sid James, Joyce Grenfell, Peter Ustinov, Mervyn Johns, Cecil Parker, Bernard Miles, Eric Portman, Miles Malleson, Frederick Valk, Michael Redgrave.
Didn't notice: Ernest Thesiger, Amy Veness, Marius Goring, Dennis Price, Renee Asherson. Robert Flemyng is a doctor, also The Blue Lamp, Kafka, much on TV.
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