Diana Wynyard didn't have much luck with her on-screen husbands. The same year this was released (it had been shot the previous year) Anton Walbrook was doing his level best to drive her insane in Gaslight and here she is saddled with thief and murderer Ralph Richardson. Richardson had already played one barber on stage, the eponymous Sheppy, in what turned out to be the last play written (in 1934) by Somerset Maugham and in 1939 he returned to the profession via this risible film in which not one single frame rings true. Much is made of its setting, Newcastle-upon-Tyne yet we listen in vain for a Geordie accent and Richardson's young apprentice persists in addressing any and everyone as 'guv'nor', an expression peculiar to Cockneys. Diana Wynyard makes no attempt to disguise her cut-glass accent and perhaps because the plot calls for her to owe some £84 to a tradesman, reminiscent of Emma Bovary, she plays her Geordie wife with a touch of the French bourgeoisie. In passing the price of buttons, dusters, net curtains etc must have been astronomical in pre-war Newcastle for her to accummulate such a debt a few pence at a time but clearly the film is not too concerned about realism despite realism being a selling point. Essentially a load of old tosh.
Review of The Fugitive
