Robert Preston had an interesting career. He started out as a movie actor, a star but not a big one, and drifted into television in its early days. Always a presence on Broadway, he achieved superstardom for his portrayal of Harold Hill in The Music Man, and went on to do the movie as well as other big films and Broadway shows, including originating the role of Henry II in The Lion in Winter.Here, he stars in a Hammer film from 1952, Cloudburst, based on a play by Leo Marks. Preston plays John Graham, a cryptographer and someone who worked in the Resistance. His wife Carol is played by Elizabeth Sellars. The two are very much in love, and she saved John's life during the war while, under torture, refusing to talk. They are expecting their first child.As a result of her experience with the Gestapo, Carol has a marked limp, and she falls in the road. A car runs her over and doesn't stop. The driver is a murder suspect trying to get out of town. Graham decides to get revenge and formulates a plan.There's nothing unusual about the story, except in this case, the story focuses in on the character of Graham, his calmness and determination while facing that he has lost everything and cares about nothing but revenge on the driver and his passenger, a woman who told him to keep driving.Colin Tapley plays Inspector Davi, and he does an excellent job.Worth seeing I think for Preston.The author, Leo Marks, kind of a film Forrest Gump. was a cryptographer during the war and gave the poem The Life that I Have to spy Violette Szabo to use as a code. Her story was made into a film in 1958 called "Carve Her Name is Pride," a beautiful film. After leaving cryptography, Marks began to write movies and plays, most notably the film Peeping Tom. His father owned the bookshop featured in 84 Charing Cross Road, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.

The story in "Cloudburst" is not particularly believable...but that can also be said about MANY movies. However, the film has many unique story elements--and that's something that makes it worth seeing.This British film stars Robert Preston as a Canadian living in the UK. He and his wife are happily in love and life is looking up for them--until, out of the blue, she is fun over by a couple jerks who couldn't care less! Instead of giving the police a correct identification, the husband is determined to investigate the case on his own...and then kill the killers! What makes it really unusual is the savagery of his attacks. It's rather unflinching and brutal. Overall, the film is an interesting example of British film noir--and Preston was very good in the lead.

Cloudburst (1951)A great title, and a curious, odd little film that is commanding at times and well filmed throughout. And it has some real surprises, so good drama.The big surprise is near the beginning and I don't want to give anything away, but there is a deeply romantic core to the entire movie. This is most of all about a man who loves his wife. Both man and wife are involved in the British top secret code breaking operation of WWII, and the movie begins in fact with a tour of the code-breaking room. But then it shifts to our two leads, the man a hale and handsome Robert Preston, the woman a cute and slightly mysterious Elizabeth Sellars. They're going to have a baby, life looks perfect ahead.But things take a sudden turn, and Preston is off on a solitary manhunt. His lonely quest and his isolation from his friends make this a kind of British film noir, a post-war malaise hanging over the film (it's set in 1946). There is a more than slight improbability to some of the revenge he wreaks (the victims seem a hair willing to just stand there and take it) but if you accept this as just part of the drama, the rest of the film in all its small details is really great, really compelling.In a way, the movie is a metaphor for the whole war, both on the grand scale (hating the Germans) and on a personal level (hating particular crimes, specific deaths). And if retribution occurs, a higher order of justice is inserted, too. And honor, or a sense of doing the right thing based on conscience. Preston pulls off all sides of this dilemma well. He's warm and he's cold, he's smart and he's flawed. And in the end he's sentimental, too. The final reading of the code, once it's broken, is a touching triumph.And what about the character Sellars plays? "My hatred would overwhelm me like a cloudburst," she says, explaining not only the title, but the theme of the movie, retribution from the gut. She inhabits the film very much, but from the opposite side of things than Sellars. As you'll see. The film does move slowly at times. The war is over, that kind of high drama is past, but in its smaller goals it never stutters, it never fails to know what it wants and how to get there.

I found this movie disappointing. With a plot like that, in a British movie of this era, and Robert Preston to boot, I had very high hopes.The first half is an extremely sappy love story between the two principals, told against grainy dim backgrounds in night scenes. After the accident Preston all too quickly gets his revenge and even more quickly he is picked up in a super efficient police investigation (there is never another suspect, they latch on to him for no reason).I would have preferred a more abbreviated romance, a longer search for the killers, and at least somewhat realistic detective work.The other scenes of Preston's work as a cryptographer seem to consist of a room of eight nondescript people mumbling to themselves. Is that really how they broke codes in the 50's?? Definitely not a keeper.