The Rossiter Case (1951)
The happy marriage of Liz and Peter Rossiter is shattered after Liz is paralysed in an accident. Peter soon finds solace with Honor, his sister-in-law, but when she tells him she is expecting his child he is racked with guilt and turns to drink. When Honor is found murdered with Peter's gun next to her, the police arrest him. Unable to remember his movements he must discover the secret behind "The Rossiter Case".
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That was an excellent one.
Absolutely brilliant
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
THE ROSSITER CASE is a very low budget and slow paced mystery yarn from Hammer Films, made on a particularly tiny budget. The main characters are a disabled woman and her husband, who is carrying on a secret affair with her own sister. You get an hour of slow-witted melodrama and inaction followed by some brief murder elements, but it's all very trite and hackneyed and not a patch on the other thrillers that Hammer would put out both during the 1950s and 1960s. It says something that the only fun here is from witnessing a pre-stardom Stanley Baker in a cameo during the opening pub scene.
Well-made if somewhat slow-paced British melodrama involving an aristocrat cheating on his paralyzed wife with her sister. Sheila Burrell's portrayal of the husband-stealing sister is powerfully disturbing even negatively impacting her physical appearance as her character unfolds throughout the movie. The condoning of the overt affair by family and friends is remarkably insensitive to its impact on the paralyzed woman, Liz Rossiter. Helen Shingler's Liz Rossiter is selfless without becoming pitiful. This is a good movie that requires patience due to the snails-pacing.
The only point of interest in this way too talky film was seeing a young Stanley Baker as a glorified extra cast as Joe who is entrusted with one line of dialogue by the producers and yet he became the more famous of the cast.Other reviewers have given the basic premise of this 1950 film which could have been edited to one half its length.I will not repeat the sparse plot and I only rated it 6/10.The only actor familiar to me was seeing Euen Solon as the police inspector.I agree with another user's review, it should not have been filmed but consigned to the radio at a time when most of the population went to the cinema to see their heroes and heroines of the silver screen and listened to the radio.
The plot of the film largely has to do with the love triangle between a married man, his wife, who was paralyzed in a car crash and her sister who is having an affair with the husband. The sister wants the husband to leave his wife, but he won't and it causes all sorts of problems...Actually it leads to murder in the final 15 or 20 minutes of the film. There is no mystery as to who does it, the real question is will they be found out and what will the ramifications be.A way too talky film substitutes talk for action. Nothing much really happens other than emotions simmer under the surface which would be all fine and good except that the film is largely static as a result with people just sitting and standing around talking with no sense of motion (this would have been a heck of a radio play. By the time the murder happens you really won't care, especially after the denouncement at the end What were they thinking?