Another British picture (new to me) showing on Talking Pictures TV, this is a Francis Durbridge adaptation. Durbridge (1912-1998) was a very prolific writer of radio and TV serials as well as novels and plays. His work was widely adapted and Wikipedia lists German, Italian and French TV adaptations as well as all those in the UK. Durbridge was best known for the Paul Temple radio serials in which Temple and his wife Steve become involved in crime thrillers. They were broadcast from 1938-68 (and are now to be heard on BBC Radio 4 Extra). Durbridge was born in Hull and educated at Bradford Grammar School.
The Teckman Mystery was an adaptation of a TV serial from 1953-4. 1953 was the period when TV audiences began to grow in the UK around the time of the Coronation in 1953, but presumably there was still a sizeable potential cinema audience for an adaptation. The story was certainly contemporary. A crime novelist Phillip Chance (John Justin) is surprised to be asked by his publisher to write a biography of a test pilot, Martin Teckman (Michael Medwin) who was killed when the new jet fighter he was flying disappeared with only a fragment of the fuselage recovered. Chance is even more surprised to discover that the woman sitting next to him on the plane bringing him back to London from his writer’s retreat in France is Teckman’s sister Helen (Margaret Leighton). You’d think he would have found that suspicious! As you might expect, the plot involves a group of foreign agents who have attempted to steal the experimental fighter (a model of which in the film is similar to the Gloster Javelin which was being tested at the time – a Javelin did crash in the week before the film opened).
The most significant feature of the production may well be that the director was Wendy Toye making her début. Ms Toye was a choreographer, dancer and actor who had a successful career as a stage and TV director which lasted until the 1990s. After directing a short film which won a prize at Cannes in 1952 she made seven features and a contribution to a compendium film. Two of the films were crime narratives but most of the rest were comedies. She was only the second British woman to direct mainstream studio features after 1945. Muriel Box was the first. Both women deserve to be better known.
The Teckman Mystery is an ‘A’ feature with a strong cast. John Justin is actually quite good as the Durbridge type of amateur detective with enough arrogance and charm. His career never really took on the next step from his early starring role in The Thief of Baghdad (UK-US 1940) but here he does well. Margaret Leighton is top-billed as a femme fatale in what some reviewers describe as a noir. The film was photographed by the experienced Jack Hildyard and features some nice location work around London including the final section filmed around Tower Bridge and the adjacent docks. It was projected in theatres at 1.66:1 but slightly cropped on TV to allow a 16:9 TV broadcast. American reviews suggest that the plot is ‘meandering’. I didn’t feel that myself and at times it moves very quickly – but at 90 minutes it did feel a little like an 80 minute film that had been expanded. As with many of these TPTV prints, the film has been released on a Network DVD which gets a generally positive review from DVD Beaver.
This is a well-made film and if you like old-fashioned crime mysteries I can recommend it. For me the interest is in the subject matter. This was the period when British aviation was at its height and aspects of it were world-leading. The Cold War was becoming a reality and films about jet aircraft and test pilots were all the rage. The Net (UK 1953) was shown on the same day as The Teckman Mystery on Talking Pictures TV. Not long ago we had David Lean’s The Sound Barrier (UK 1952) and before that the slightly different No Highway (UK-US 1951) – a new airliner is grounded when evidence of possible faults is found. Plane travel was only beginning to feature regularly in British films. I was intrigued by the aircraft that Phillip boards for Berlin that might be an Airspeed Ambassador.
Network’s teaser (with Raymond Huntley as Phillip’s publisher) for the DVD release in 2016:
The Case for Global Film 