This is one of the great films in the history of film making, not only for the tremendous lesson in how to live one's life with humility and sensitivity towards others but also for the towering performance of Alastair Sim which sets the bar by which all other performances of this play are measured. When I first saw it I was stunned when it was over, because it is the kind of film that creeps up on you, scene by scene, and accumulates its power slowly as the plot unfolds. The story line is timeless and totally à propos for today's selfish world. It's a must see for all History of Film classes and for Philosophy Ethics classes too but surprisingly few students today know about it. Alas.

A wonderful adaptation of an already very good play that, in my mind, improves upon the original source material. As a morality tale it's fairly thought provoking - though it's slightly irritating that the female character has to spell things out for the audience every few minutes - but it probably works even better as a simple character drama.A good cast is headed by the always fantastic Alastair Sim as Inspector Poole (the name changed from the original text - in my opinion for the better, controversially), who, though on screen less often than you might think, is like a burning sun around which orbits everything else in the film. The cool, calm yet still devastating Inspector is a part Sim was born to play and I can't imagine another actor bettering it. The Inspector as presented here is more benign than that of the original play, which could have risked making the Inspector seem less interested in the other characters and too detached from them - the Inspector of the film never raises his voice, and some of his more forceful lines are given to the young female role - but Sim is able to maintain a chillingly capable and oppressive demeanour simply by smiling. He almost floats through the proceedings. A truly magnetic performance.The direction is also to be commended - there are several edits between shots designed to make you jump, and they definitely do the job - and enlivens the material when the film could have been a bit of a slog (though the script is great it's obviously far more difficult to maintain an electrifying atmosphere through film than through the more immediate medium of the theatrical stage). There's little I can say about "An Inspector Calls"; I'd just highly recommend it. Give it a go.

JB Priestley usually had a moralising theme to his plays.As a Socialist he wanted to show his audience the social ills in society and prick their conscience.This film, which my son studied for his English GCSE was made into a film in 1954 with Alistair Sim in the title role.To help my son get a better understanding we all went up to the West End to see the play acted by professionals.It has a haunting theme about the social ills in the Edwardian society of 1912 when a girl first loses her job at the factory when asking for higher wages by the father, loses her second job courtesy of the daughter, loses her flat courtesy of the daughter's fiancé, is made pregnant by the son and finally is refused genuine charity by the mother.My son returned the favour by giving me a DVD version of the film when I expressed a wish to see it, since one sees so few worthy films on TV these days compared to all the modern rubbish shown.There is rather a ghostly denouement to the film and twist which Priestley cleverly writes into the plot.Although Alistair Sim is only on screen for a short time he effortlessly steals your attention.

This plays just fine as a straight forward mystery movie, but the play has more potential than that and as a straight forward mystery without the rich suggestive overtones the plot is admittedly a bit out there. So when you play something straight that isn't straight what you get is this.Guy Hamilton doesn't add much to the proceedings and the performers mostly go through the motions in a surface way that is totally at odds with the material. There is no building sense of doom or desperation to most of the thing. It's slow and steady. Actually much of the flat footed surface approach I'd put the blame on Hamilton. At his worst he was one of those, "oh this is all just a movie" approach to too much of his output. Part of this made him perfect for Goldfinger but also helped camp up and ultimately start to wreck the Bond films later on. Most of his pre Goldfiner work is, like this film, pretty flat.The music score is pretty lousy, though there isn't much of it, especially the stupid end credit music that further eats away the tone of the piece.There are risky elements for the time and had the film been made in America then it would have been a disaster. Sim is quite good but perhaps a bit too laid back, though he has most of the best moments performance wise, it is again a bit of a missed opportunity to have him not rip loose ever. His expression at the end is memorable. The young brother and sister character's probably come off best, though Bryan Forbes drunk act at one point turns into a good Stan Laurel or Charlie Chaplin thing, that isn't really appropriate.Well photographed and produced, the DVD is spotless. I suppose most or anyone who's heard of this story saw the lat 90's revival which I liked better than this film.So if you prefer your drawing room mysteries done very dry and very safe you'll love this film and it's good on that level if you can still buy into the things that don't stick perhaps to convention.But we'll have to wait for a less safe, more dramatic version of the very good source material rather than this film which prefers melodrama.