You know what's wrong with your fish, don't you? It's dead.

Nowhere To Go
Seth Holt 1958 UK                         

I've heard it said many times that Harry H. Corbett was a much better actor than he was generally considered, he himself even became quite bitter about it in later life believing that his best-known role Harold Steptoe had blinded the mainstream acting world to his ability and effectively neutered the range of roles he'd be considered for. Watching his performance in this Ealing drama (they didn't just do comedies) it's hard to argue with him. It's only a small part, momentary even, but a memorable one, a single scene in the back of a darkened car - at first I didn't even recognise him. Nowhere To Go is basically a reversal of these fortunes, it's really not as good as you'd imagine it should be. Admittedly it looks an interesting prospect on paper - Maggie Smith (in her debut) as a bored socialite who is attracted to 'lost causes and lame ducks', Bernard Lee and Corbett as criminals, a script by Kenneth Tynan, Dizzy Reece's jazz score, the Ealing connection - but the result is a little uneven, not least because leading man George Nader is so dull and his character so repellent that it's hard to feel any connection with him, even in an anti-hero sense. As such his quest to recover hidden loot and escape the law never elicits our sympathy, at times we can even understand why everyone's against him. It's not only his arrogance or even the fact that he's a thief that's the problem, it's his lack of charisma (essential for a con-man I would have thought) and utter cowardice. For the first half hour he remains remarkably cool under pressure, even commenting on it himself, but the second he sees a policeman he completely loses his shit and later, when he is violently challenged by Lee in one of the best scenes in the film, he is easily subdued and submits to his foe's will. By the time we reach the last half hour he's been outsmarted, hurt by his own incompetence and is just desperate to escape but still not quite grateful for Smith's help, his hope for luck gone completely - if he walked down a dark alley he'd tread in something. The rest of the film is similarly black - everyone is out for what they can get, no-one is trustworthy (with the possible exception of Smith) and certainly no-one is traditionally good. Even a local pet shop owner played by British legend Lionel Jeffries is remarkably cruel. There are a couple of creative set-pieces and the cinematography is nicely understated but honestly, combined with the downright miserable ending, it's hard to imagine a film like this being green-lighted for a director's debut. In fact you get the distinct impression that with a more experienced director it would have been a lot better.