The Movie Waffler Re-Release Review - AN INSPECTOR CALLS | The Movie Waffler

Re-Release Review - AN INSPECTOR CALLS

An Inspector Calls review
A family is shocked when a mysterious inspector implicates them in a young woman's death.

Review by Eric Hillis

Directed by: Guy Hamilton

Starring: Alastair Sim, Jane Wenham, Eileen Moore, Bryan Forbes, Brian Worth, Olga Lindo

An Inspector Calls poster

Three years after his signature role of Scrooge in 1951's A Christmas Carol, Alastair Sim was afforded the chance to play a sort of anti-Scrooge in director Guy Hamilton's screen adaptation of JB Priestley's morality play An Inspector Calls. As the titular inspector, Sim plays a variation of the ghosts of Dickens' tale as he gives various characters a glimpse at the consequences of their unfeeling actions.

An Inspector Calls review

Set in 1912, the drama plays out in the home of the upper-class Birling family. Gathered for a dinner party are patriarch Arthur (Arthur Young), his wife Sybil (Olga Lindo), their daughter Sheila (Eileen Moore) and son Eric (Bryan Forbes), and Sheila's fiancé Gerald (Brian Worth). After dinner they receive a visit from Inspector Poole (Sim), who brings the grisly news that a young woman has passed away after seemingly poisoning herself.


The Birlings express sympathy but are initially dumbfounded as to why the inspector believes they have anything to do with the matter. But then, one by one, Poole jogs their memories and it seems they all had various run-ins with the deceased. Portrayed by Jane Wenham in flashbacks, we see how the woman (known as either Eva Smith or Daisy Renton) entered the lives of all four of the Birlings and Gerald, and how she may have been left scarred by the experiences.

An Inspector Calls review

Hamilton and writer Desmond Davis make some major and minor adjustments to Priestley's play. In their hands it becomes something of a proto-Twilight Zone with Poole portrayed as a sort of supernatural presence who seems to have a gift for premonition. The big change of course is the flashback structure, which opens up the play from its drawing room confines and fleshes out the character of Eva/Daisy. In doing so, however, it disrupts the ambiguity of whether Eva/Daisy is actually the same person in all five encounters or rather a cipher for a variety of young working class women who have been mistreated by this lot. Poole shows each of his five "suspects" a photograph of Eva/Daisy, but he ensures that they each see the picture in isolation. In the play this leads to the question of whether or not the inspector showed them pictures of five different women, but in Hamilton's film this touch is made redundant by the casting of Wenham.


While it may cloud the ambiguous nature of the story, Wenham's addition is also the film's greatest asset. The actress is thoroughly sympathetic as the victim of the Birlings' various misdeeds, but she plays Eva/Daisy with a tough exterior, as though determined not to allow herself become a victim. At times her treatment is difficult to watch, none more so than when she's forced to beg a charitable committee run by Sybil Birling for financial help. Sybil belittles her, suggesting that her troubles are all of her own making. Most of the film is rather blandly staged but Hamilton cleverly uses framing and space here to imply the class gap between Eva/Daisy and Sybil, with the latter looking down from a raised platform on the former.

An Inspector Calls review

As a morality play, An Inspector Calls is often guilty of getting a little too overtly preachy in its message, but there's an undeniable thrill in seeing a bunch of toffs held accountable for their actions. With Sim's Poole seeming to take great pleasure from his interrogation of his "suspects," who in turn get increasingly offended at his line of questioning, An Inspector Calls plays like a precursor to TV's Columbo. That show was a favourite of Soviet state TV for its theme of a working man outwitting a wealthy foe each week, and An Inspector Calls is similarly left-wing in its class conflict, so much so that Priestley's play actually premiered in the Soviet Union in 1945.

An Inspector Calls is released on 4K UHD, bluray, DVD and VOD by Studiocanal on October 7th.