Duncan Lewis Movies

In this crime melodrama, a Swiss woman finds herself unwittingly involved in a plot to steal from her employer, a London diamond merchant. Her boyfriend is behind the scheme. First he sends two accomplices disguised as German jewelers to see the boss. He is not fooled by their ruse and is killed while the woman is knocked unconscious. She awakens with amnesia and begins aimlessly wandering the London streets. Thinking that his girl has squealed to the police, her boy friend begins scouring the town to find her. Meanwhile, she is taken in by a boxer who returns to the ring to win the money needed to get her out of the country. Trouble ensues when her lover finally finds her after the match and begins beating on the exhausted fighter. To stop him, the woman shoots the villainous lover. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Terrence Rattigan, the playwright who brought us the multicharactered, multistoried Separate Tables, again offers us an episodic cross-section of humanity in The V.I.P.'s. When a heavy London fog paralyzes all air traffic, the lives of several people are profoundly affected. As indicated by the title, most of the characters in this portmanteau film are of the social and/or financial elite. Elizabeth Taylor wishes to leave her enormously wealthy husband Richard Burton in favor of playboy Louis Jourdan. Peripatetic European film producer Orson Welles is hoping to escape London with his newest protegee Elsa Martinelli in order to avoid paying his income tax. Australian businessman Rod Taylor, accompanied by his devoted (and adoring) secretary Maggie Smith, is anxious to head to New York to stave off a hostile takeover of his firm. And impoverished aristocrat Margaret Rutherford (who won an Oscar for her performance) would rather not go to Florida to accept a job as a social arbiter, but the wolf must be kept from the door. Before the fog disperses, you can be sure that at least one of the many plotlines will intersect with another. David Frost, in a tiny part as a reporter, was fond of recalling in later years that, while the major stars of The VIPS were introduced in the opening titles with animated limousines, he was consigned a tiny Volkswagen; alas, no such cartoon joke appears in the film, though on occasion the actors-particularly Mr. Welles-behave as though they were cartoons. Mercilessly skewered by the critics, The VIPS was a winner at the box-office, due in great part to the Cleopatra-inspired publicity concerning the top-billed Liz Taylor and Dick Burton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in World War II times, this drama involves a highly trained bunch of British soldiers who must parachute into Nazi-held Belgium on a rescue and destroy mission. Documentary film footage is included in the early parts of the film as the trainees get prepared for the task ahead. Robert Beatty plays the priest, Father Phillip, and Simone Signoret appears as an insurgent who falls in love with another of the trained resistors. ~ All Movie Guide

Long before he became the Disney Studios' favorite stuffy Brit, David Tomlinson enjoyed top billing in the 1948 comedy Love in Waiting. The main story is carried by Peggy Evans and Elspeth Gray, cast as a pair of cute waitresses. Evans makes the mistake of crossing a fellow employee, and as a result she is set up on a petty theft charge. Her antagonist loses out in the end, and all is well. Originally aimed at the British "home market," Love in Waiting was telecast to death in the early days of American TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide