5 Fingers

Bea says: Although the title of this film makes me snigger it's actually a very respectable 1950s film noir seen at the NFT, London South Bank last night. It was rather a late night for Cecil and me - the warm NFT theatre was pleasantly soporific after a walk through the cold from Victoria Station, and dinner on the way there. However, although I drifted off a bit in the first half hour I was soon gripped by the somewhat convoluted but always clear storyline: former valet to nobility is currently working as British ambassador's valet in Turkey during WW2. An impoverished and slightly shady past means he values money above all things, so photographs documents and sells them to the (bumbling) Nazis, until things heat up. There is a love interest of sorts too (his former employer's wife, the countess). Great performances, fantastic on-location cinematography, sharp humour. Very enjoyable.

Cecil says: Ah, the golden age of cinema: when dialogue ruled and lighting meant more than special effects. But check out the on-screen kisses: James Mason kisses the Countess with pursed lips, rather like I did with Debbie Kavanagh on my first date in Hull aged 14 (probably the censors wouldn't have allowed full-on tongues back in those early 1950s years). And some of the new technology was fantastic: the vacuum cleaner, for example, was key to the villain's undoing (and amazingly it looked like it was the very same model as the one used by both Bea's and my parents in the 1960s). Crucial to the denoument, however, was the money. Now, for those readers who don't know '5 Fingers' and don't want the end of the film to be ruined, I'd suggest you read no further...

Ah yes, the money: having seen the Counterfeiters only a few weeks earlier (and having typed our blog only the night before), the first thing I thought when I saw the large Sterling notes being paid by the Nazis to James Mason, was that they could be counterfeit. And that, my dear friends, was the final nail in the coffin of our villain's grand plan. But, if we hadn't seen the Counterfeiters we would never have thought of that as a possible outcome; and presumably to film goers in 1952 it also came as a great surprise (unless, of course, the Nazi counterfeiting in the War was more well known than we realise - but I'll leave other readers of this blog to post their thoughts on this...)

Rating: ***