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DVD Review


DVD cover

Secret People

 

Starring: Valentina Cortese, Serge Reggiani, Charles Goldner and Audrey Hepburn
Optimum Classic
RRP: £15.99
OPTD1548
Certificate: 15
Available 18 January 2010


In 1930’s London two sisters flee the fascistic regimen of General Galbran. Nora and Maria are exiled in London for seven years before Maria, on a trip to Paris, bumps into a former lover, Louis, who is part of the Spanish resistance. When they return to London he persuades her to help in an assassination attempt on the General, but things do not go as Maria plans and an innocent bystander is killed. Wracked by guilt Maria must decide whether she continues out of love for Louis or listens to her conscience...

Secret People (B&W. 1952. 1 hr, 30 min, 48 sec) is an attempt by director Thorold Dickinson to create the sort of brooding art house films which where normally the bread and butter of the European film industry. It works but it’s over complicated plot, and plot elements, will leave most audience unsure whether they are watching a spy thriller, a love story or a melodrama.

The choice of main actors was guaranteed to turn off contemporary British audience, as outside of their own countries the actors were not particularly well known - that is apart for a twenty-one year ole Audrey Hepburn (Nora), who plays the younger of the two sisters, and will be the only real reason for most people buying this obscure film.

The shame of the project is that you can see what the director was trying to say about the choice between engaging in violence or listening to your internal conscience, it’s an important subject, but one which the director, in his desire to make the film stylistically European, fumbles, falters and eventually fails to convey to the audience as its central message.

The clean print is presented in an aspect ratio of 4:3 with a mono 2.0 audio track. By way of extras you get a short, but insightful examination of the film by Philip Horne (11 min, 38 sec) and the original theatrical trailer (2 min, 28 sec).

5

Charles Packer

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