No need to praise this little gem, as previous reviewers have done so already. There is a nicely democratic air about the piece, looking at a wide range of people going about their daily lives. We see the hardworking souls at the bottom of the heap such as the stall-holder in the street market, the bus crew at the depot (and at the races), attendants at the Turkish baths, office workers, teachers and entertainers. Then there are the more parodic pictures of idler, stupider and richer folk.Not only does the film draw you into the lives of the people on the bus up to the moment of the crash, but it also gives you resolutions for the problems they were facing. For example, the chorus girl realises she was foolish to head for the lecherous agent's flat and that she'll be better off marrying her dull but loving schoolmaster. Also, the two deaths are in fact blessings. One is undeserved, but it means that the victim never knows the unfaithful wife he loves has left him, even though the faithful dog waiting for him in the empty home tears our hearts. The other is richly deserved, ridding the earth of a useless villain, despite him doing a good deed seconds before he dies, and freeing his victims to marry in peace. Matrimony is celebrated, despite its flaws, as the great social cement. Extra-marital sex, whether achieved or just wished for, is corrosive (yet all the behind the scenes shots of the chorus girls, while titillating, are fun.) And I must have a juvenile sense of humour because I found Jessie Matthew's posh voice discussing knickers hilarious.

Despite its age, this film retains its undoubted charm and attraction, and is a fine, surviving example of early British cinema. It has an underlying air of eeriness, interspersed with shafts of humour which are not out of place, and serve to demonstrate the assured direction & production values involved. So many episodic type films are disjointed and untidy, but this is not one of them. The standard of acting helps a great deal, and the various disparate characters come across as interesting and believable. All in all, this long-forgotten little gem is well worth anyone's attention, in spite of the one jarring note in the film which, surprisingly, escaped the censor's attention!

Why Jessie Matthews, one of Britains top musical stars, was in this movie in between her sparkling "The Good Companions" and the classic "Evergreen" is a good question? When I first saw it I was really disappointed. I wanted to see her sing and dance - she was billed as "Millie - the non - stop variety girl" but there was more stop than variety.Now I see it as a good little drama.It is about a bus crash and the stories, leading up to it, of the people on the bus.Apart from Jessie Matthews, who is great as Millie - Sir Ralph Richardson plays her fiancée ( yes, that's right).Edmund Gwenn - who went to Hollywood to co-star in Lassie movies and also with Natalie Wood in "Miracle on 34th Street", plays a grumpy businessman. Gordon Harker is his very annoying partner.Emlyn Williams - who wrote "Night Must Fall" was the black - mailing villain and Frank Lawton, who went to Hollywood and appeared in "David Copperfield" and "The Devil Doll" is the young man in trouble. Sonnie Hale who was married to Jessie Matthews at the time played the bus conductor.

An early connecting lives film, much like a 1930s 'Pulp Fiction' without all the vulgar language and violence, it is very well done in most aspects, and considering when it was made, it is well ahead of its time. The film editing and the acting - especially from Gordon Harker and Robertson Hare - are particularly strong points of the film, and the overall product is engaging the whole time through. Arguably there are at least one too many characters, which complexes the film much more than is necessary, however this hardly subtracts from this very unique and highly interesting, but too often forgotten, early British film.