Rent The Halfway House (1944)

Nowhere Near Halfway To Being Any Good. - The Halfway House review by NC

It's wartime propaganda, so allowances have to be made, but no amount of special pleading can prevent this from being an oversentimental, overdramatic, overacted underachievement. All the elements are here for a nice, eerily atmospheric ghost story, but the mawkishness and the inevitable patriotism is laid on with a trowel, burying the film every time it dares to raise its head above the infertile soil.

A number of guests converge on a country inn, each of them needing to stop and reflect on their life in order to make a right decision. The mystery of the hosts, and the inn itself, is telegraphed far too early, and as that's the only point of interest, the rest of the time is spent watching the cloying resolutions of each guest - which you know is going to happen anyway.

It's all so trite. Every one of the guests (even a teenage girl) speak frightfully, frightfully correct, what? Problems and attitudes which have festered over years disappear in minutes. Not one of the stories concerning each guest is the slightest bit original.

There is one enjoyable moment: when the host of The Halfway House tells the guests that the Welsh don't hate the English anymore. You just have to laugh.

Ealing in Wales - The Halfway House review by CH

Essentially a portmanteau film with a supernatural twist, which is evident from the start as guests arrive at a remote inn/hotel in Wales run by Mervyn Johns and his daughter Glynis. Here is an allegory created to give the visitors a chance to reflect upon their lives so far.

Even though it has Cavalcanti as a producer, the film leaves one wondering what Powell and Pressburger could have done with it - think of such allegorical films as their A Canterbury Tale which also depicts the countryside as a character in its own right. As for Ealing, The Halfway House is on a rung below the supernatural Dead of Night which appeared a couple of years later.

This said, there is so much here that anybody with a taste for Ealing films should not miss it.