The Night My Number Came Up (1955)
IMDb is runtime 1 hour and 34 minutes, rated 7.1/10.0 by 787 cienmatizens.
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, one or all of the above.
Verdict: Nicely done.
A routine flight full of British character actors (Alexander Knox, Denholm Elliott, Michael Redgrave, Sheila Sim, and more, abetted by Michael Hordern) goes awry in the waning days when Britain still pretended to be a world power before James Bond took that nostalgia duty. Leaving from a very Brit Hong Kong for Tokyo they stop at Okinawa for fuel. From blooded Okinawa they will overfly devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki to perv on the atomic wastelands. At least two of the characters had been imprisoned by the Japanese and a little perving has appeal to them.
Foreboding was generated by a prologue about a lost flight, way off course, and a passer-by with a dream, hence the fantasy element.
We all know that things will go wrong, and some of the passengers are worried about that dream. (Yes, it is confusing isn’t it.) Are dreams premonitions or indigestion? Deep. Will knowledge of this dream be reflexive? Will it effect how people act and become self-fulfilling? That seems to be the point. That theme is later played out in miniature with the pilot.
Once on board the film becomes an examination of the characters from the withdrawn RAF veteran, the naive stenographer, the worried Sinologist, the brash business stereotype, the two Tommies who get off at Okinawa, the unflappable Air Marshall, and the comatose Ambassador. Nigel Stock who went on to Amsterdam is superb as the pilot when he reminds the Air Marshall who is in charge right here, right now. Victor Madden is wasted as the flight engineer serving tea. Not once does he go all twitchy as only he could do. The flight seems to take real time.
There is also a corker of a last line about being lost and then found.