One must appreciate the brevity of AN INSPECTOR CALLS, running a breathless 80 minutes and directed by future 007 helmer Guy Hamilton, the whole story is condensed into one single night in 1912, the Birlings, a silk-stocking British family celebrates the engagement of Sheila (Moore) and Gerald Croft (Worth), with the presence of her parents Arthur (Young) and Sybil (Lindo), and her already tipsy brother Eric (Forbes).

The festivity is precipitately interrupted by the advent of Inspector Poole (Sim), who simply materializes out of thin air in the dining room (instead of coming from the main entrance, which is differed from J.B. Priestley’s source play), attendant with an ominous score, which foreshadows something that turns out to be rather surreal. Poole claims that he is investigating an apparent suicidal case of a young woman named Eva Smith (Wenham, first wife of Albert Finney), and in a sequential order, he tactically and competently proves that Arthur, Sheila, Gerald, Sybil and Eric, to different extents, all should be answerable for Eva’s despondency and her ultimate demise, but cagily, he only shows the picture of Eva (who later rechristened as Daisy Renton) to one individual a time.

Flashback is concisely interspersed to reveal each of the quintet’s respective involvement in Eva’s downward spiral, to them, she is a recalcitrant employee, an impudent shop assistant, a low-hanging damsel in distress, an insolent charity seeker and a good-hearted sympathizer who cannot resist boyish charm. Subjugated to iniquity and cruelty (a cocktail of sexual agendas, moral haughtiness, peer jealousy, capitalistic cupidity and lack of empathy), Eva/Daisy represents the countless, down-trodden have-nots whose misfortune is cumulatively (if unintentionally) sealed by bias, selfishness, wantonness of those well-to-do members of the society, this message is bluntly blurted out by Sheila in a later stage, which shows Priestley’s lenient stance towards the younger generation’s repentance and malleability, at the same time counterpoises the older one’s fossilized intractability.

But bewilderment remains, apart from whether Eva/Daisy is the same person, or even if she really exists at all, once Poole’s identity is being challenged, and screenwriter Desmond Davis fine-tunes the play’s ending by doubling down the mystical impact, not just Poole might be a compassionate soothsayer, also suggested by his entrance and attested by his egress, he might be entirely the figment of the Birlings’s consciousness.

Performance wise, the core cast is solid if nothing too spectacular to bowl audience over, mainly thanks to the rote dialogue and narrative development (except that shark-jumping ending), Priestley has good conscience and intention, but his wording, more often than not, feels prosaic and didactic. Among them, Sim’s gravitas vehemently holds sway; future director Forbes exudes a disarming facet that might alleviate Eric’s cardinal foibles a bit; Lindo’s matriarchal Sybil is a grand dame, but all things considered, her moral superiority is the least deplorable attribute in the context (where a lippy Eva doesn’t pass muster as a sympathetic beseecher), yet, she has to take the blow for being a mollycoddling mother, a faint whiff of sexism plumes out inadvertently. Last but not the least, it is Wenham’s embodiment of Eva’s throbbing vulnerability that stands out, a young woman whose self-knowledge and kindness cannot save her from perdition, right from her hearty laughter in the very first scene to a misty-eyed dejection in the very last one, she is the soul of this approachable parable, proselytizing us to heed the collateral damage of our day-to-day comportment.

referential entries: Hamilton’s GOLDFINGER (1964, 6.4/10), THE MIRROR CRACK’D (1980, 6.2/10).

我發(fā)現(xiàn)我喜歡啥了

一定得有一個固定的“主體空間”，再有別的次要小空間；是喜劇的核，配上鏡頭語言的調(diào)度。

一步步拆穿女孩的謊言很有意思

晚飯一定要自己做，有燭光，古典音樂和酒，羅曼蒂克的超殺模式。

房間里所有的人和一個人有聯(lián)系，又一個經(jīng)典的故事模版?！具@個故事模版很容易造好看的電影，因為戲劇沖突太強了，雖然是強拉的，但只要表演過關(guān)，就不成問題，我能想到的是《如月疑云》，后來完全翻拍的《罪惡之家》，《雷雨》是不是比這個早啊，看來《雷雨》是鼻祖？】

麥格芬人物必須是死了對么，有沒有別的可能？比如失蹤？比如犯了大事關(guān)進監(jiān)獄？我想到“上街女孩”那個本子，跟這個似乎有點像，但好像粗制濫造，當時也覺得有點強拉關(guān)系，但觀眾似乎就是想看能強拉出怎樣的關(guān)系。

戲劇啊，某種意義上，就是無限的巧合形成了一個圓。

人數(shù)一定要是5個么？還是說5個為最佳，符合時間，突然想起來《如月疑云》的改變在于沒有探長，更加簡化，其實確實可以去掉探長這個角色，他只是一個連接點，提供更進一步的信息，這個信息確實可以由角色們自己發(fā)現(xiàn)。

最后兒子的部分確實能展現(xiàn)麥格芬女孩伊娃的好（幫他付錢），但別的部分卻不能（母親的部分不明顯），只有每一個部分都展現(xiàn)好才能一路共情吧？還是要的就是克制共情？不應(yīng)該啊，我覺得父親和女兒的部分設(shè)計的太弱化，還是說專門就這么設(shè)計，由淺入深，但總應(yīng)該在這兩個部分突出以娃的好～

“你并不愛我，你只是孤獨而已，我也一樣。”

只有在不孤獨的時候，才算是愛嚒...

這也許就是射手座的根了，似乎，除了那一年四月的兩周，與極少數(shù)的某些時刻，一直都很孤獨；【喜歡不喜歡自己的人原來是個虛假的概念，真正背后的意義是，一直都很孤獨。】

《如月疑云》沒有蝴蝶效應(yīng)，這個還多了一層蝴蝶效應(yīng)在里面，各有取舍吧，可以和不同的套路做結(jié)合。

不過話說回來了，三觀有問題，資本家又做錯了什么呢？他們難道不是靠自己的努力才獲得了資源？

MGB我就知道最后人會消失?。?！那個演員的眼神就不對，他對于一切都那么平靜，沒有感情，就不像是活人...（活人都是有喜怒哀懼的），最后這結(jié)尾真是神來之筆...5星5星...雙重麥格芬，強拉虛擬魔幻處理。

阿拉斯塔爾·西姆、亞歷克·吉尼斯，英國真是出些這種怪才演員。

其實還有另一重東西在里面，就是連續(xù)巧合的合理性，直到最后才開始懷疑，也不過蜻蜓點水提了一筆。