Colley Dawson (Ray Milland), designing safes for rich people who use them to lock up treasures for nobody to see, has enough of the small life: fast cars, pretty women and touching said treasures loom large in his mind. So when an antiques dealer (Barry Jones) makes him an offer to put his talents to a safe-cracking use, Colley is easily convinced to start on a rather lucrative side-career.
To have use of his ill-gotten gains right here and now without alerting the police with a sudden influx of money, Colley starts on a double life, playing the daring safe-cracker and playboy under an assumed name on the weekends while keeping up his old life-style – including living with his elderly mum – on weekdays. Eventually, he gets caught when he ignores warning signs and directed warnings. He is sentenced to a ten year prison sentence.
However, in 1941, when World War II isn’t going terribly well for the British, Colley’s talents are in demand for a commando mission. The mission’s goal is to photograph secret documents kept in a safe in mansion in occupied Belgium that would disclose the whole of German spy operations in the UK. Particularly, doing this without the Nazis figuring out it happened would be quite a success for the British. Offered a full pardon on success, Colley agrees to take part in the mission, despite his decided lack of patriotism.
Ray Milland dabbled in directing from time to time, and clearly was a fan of directing himself. He’s still trying to hang on to his old charming, somewhat roguish image here in 1958, but at this stage in his career, “roguish” often turned out somewhat sleazy. Which isn’t a bad fit for Colley at all, though I was never quite sure Milland actually realized that was the impression he gave.
As a director, Milland isn’t terrible; he certainly isn’t great either. He has a tendency to use the least interesting shot in too many scenes, and doesn’t have a great hand for pacing either, leading to a lack of tension and a sluggishness not great in the sort of genres this is dabbling in.
The script doesn’t help there either. Structurally, this is a film of two halves from different genres, both of them not terrible successful. First, we have a heist movie that isn’t terribly interested in actually making the safe-cracking business exciting, focussed on a character who doesn’t change in any way once he’s turned from safe-maker to safe-cracker. Thus, the film is more going through the motions of a crime movie than actually being one. The second half does the same with war movie tropes. Again, there’s little tension; again, Colley isn’t changed by any of his experiences; again there’s an aimless, ambling quality to the way scenes are set-up. Not even the climactic raid appears to be all that tense.
Now, one could argue the decision to not have Colley experience any sort of inner redemptive arc as a somewhat interesting and uncommon decision, but since this leaves us with a character that goes through hardship and error completely without much of interest to an audience happening with him, I’d argue it’s an inherently boring decision as well. In the hands of more accomplished director and much more accomplished writers, one could of course do something with this reversal of expectations about how this sort of film is supposed to play out, but as it stands, this just makes a pretty lifeless film even more uninvolving.
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