Just watched this on Talking Pictures. This channel are doing a great job in bringing us a wide range of "long missing from TV" movies, most of the time in excellent prints.Not sure what to say about this? I think Michael Redgrave is/was one of our greatest actors, but... everyone has there off days, and, in this movie, EVERYONE seems to be having an off day!Losey whips them all up into a frenzy of over acting, particularly Leo McKern & Alec McOwen, and things are not helped by the ridiculously over-wrought musical score, which at times drowns out the dialogue.By the end, I couldn't have cared less who did what to whom,and why,as I was losing the will to live!

****SPOILERS****We see here that a father's love for his son has no bounds even to the point of willingly giving up his life to save him from going to the gallows. Just released from a Canadian sanitarium where he spent the last two years for acute alcoholism writer David Graham, Michael Redgrave, flies to England to save his son Alec, Alec McCowen, from being executed for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie Coles, Christina Lubicz.. It was Jennie who was found beaten to death at the Stanford Mansion where they both were attending a Christmas Eve party. Alec who was so drunk at the time can't remember what happened but feeling guilt for Jennie's death he meekly accepts the judgment of the court to have him executed.It's David Graham's stubborn determination to not only find his son Innocent but also who really murdered Jennie Coles that leads him to hit the bottle that he promised his son Alec never to do again that in his alcohol induced state eventually lead him to expose Jennie's killer but at the very cost of his own life! It takes a lot of legwork as well as shots of gin whiskey and scotch for David to get to the bottom of the bottle as well Jennie's murderer. In the end with time running out and David's son Alec about to take the 13 steps to the gallows he finally finds out who Jennie's killer really is-no surprise since we saw him murder her before the starting credits even rolled down the screen-the psychopathic and maniacal owner and a bit off his rocker sports car manufacture Robert Stanford, Leo McKern,who's sexual advances she resisted!****MAJOR SPOILERS**** With Alec's execution just minutes away David confronts Stanford at his office and after pleading for him, by admitting his guilt to the authorities, to save Alec's life then as a last resort does the unthinkable! That in him throwing caution to the wind and getting into a wild slug fest with Stanford in order to have him murder David as well! That's to prove to the courts that if Stanford was willing to murder David in preventing him exposing Stanford as Jennie's killer why wouldn't he have murdered Jennie herself! With David dead on the floor and the police as well as Stanford's adopted son Brian,Paul Daneman, breaking into Stanford's office and catching him,with the murder weapon,red handed the totally crazed and hyperventilating Stanford goes into a wild and uncontrollable tirade that should have easily and hands down won him the 1957 Academy Award as the years best actor!

Rather hysterical but engrossing and very well-acted melodrama (particularly by Michael Redgrave, a BAFTA nominee, and Leo McKern), ostensibly a murder mystery but with a manifest position against capital punishment.Interestingly, the culprit is known from the very beginning but, saddled with an alcoholic hero, one is never sure whether he'll be able to prove his son's innocence of murder; the denouement, then, is terrific - as unexpected as it is ironic. Losey's expressionist style (aided by Freddie Francis's chiaroscuro cinematography) is in full sway here: actually, according to film critic Gerard Legrand - writing in "The Movie" - this was the film were the director really came into his own; I can't vouch for that myself since I have yet to watch three important films he made earlier i.e. THE PROWLER (1951) and M (1951), both Hollywood productions, and THE SLEEPING TIGER (1954), Losey's first effort following his relocation to Britain.It's undeniably a powerful film though relatively verbose (it was adapted from a play by Emlyn Williams); like I said, Losey drives his actors to fever pitch and he has chosen a most capable cast - including Ann Todd, Alec McCowen, Peter Cushing, Renee' Houston, Lois Maxwell, Joan Plowright, Peter Copley and Richard Wordsworth! The only false note throughout, perhaps, is to be found in the score by Tristram Cary - which is so over-the-top that, at times, it even drowns out the dialogue!

Time has no pity, no sympathy, no joy and no sorrow. It's passage denotes the brevity in which the living inhabit the earth. In TIME WITHOUT PITY, a young man is dong time in prison for a murder he did not commit. A correctional institution is about to put a stop to that young man's time at the behest of the State. A father caught between the daunting task of fighting the system for more time, and forgetting time altogether at the bottom of a whisky glass. A broken woman mourning the loss of time never spent with one who's out of time. Every character in this drama is lost somewhere in their own guilt ridden space and time, but director Losey makes sure his audience is always aware, littering the screen with watches and clocks ticking like a giant timebomb about to explode as the desperately pathetic father searches for a clue to disable the alarm. Lost in an alcoholic haze that is almost dreamlike in it's ability to paralyze action, he clumsily attempts to win back for his son the time he let slip away. Is it too late? An incredibly edgy, self-aware film, TIME WITHOUT PITY clearly states its objection to the State as executioner. From the opening scene, we know the son did not commit the murder, but neither the State, "You must keep your visit short . . . we don't want to upset the prisoner," the Church, "He's given himself over to more compassionate hands," or the anti-capital punishment advocates, "We're not interested in whether young Graham is innocent or guilty," seem to have a specific interest in the individual. To make matters worse, young Graham himself has given up hope and when his father pleads, "don't give up," he asks, "What difference would it have made if you had died when you were my age?" And this question gets to the core of the film; it's resonance heavily influencing the final pivotal scene.