Jack himself thinks it’s Windermere Mollie obviously thinks her husband has made a dreadful mistake and murdered the wrong man. The French Customs open what they assume is Jack Ryder’s trunk, and discover the corpse within. Jack Ryder (John Loder) explains he has more important things to do than work. He pushes his way in and, assuming Camberley is Windermere, engages in some fisticuffs, grabs the incriminating letters, and goes to join his wife on the boat train. Her husband, John “Jack” Ryder (Loder), arrives next and refuses to be so easily fobbed off. Getting no answer, she assumes Windermere has already headed for the train and accordingly does likewise. When Windermere refuses to accept this, Camberley murders him and stuffs the body into the empty trunk.Ĭamberley (Donald Wolfit), the deed done.įirst to knock on the door, while Camberley’s struggling with a recalcitrant trunk key, is Mollie. He’s another of Windermere’s victims, Henry Camberley (Wolfit), and he’s come to tell Windermere that this is the end of the line: he’s given him all the dough he’s going to get. While he’s chatting up the desk clerk (Codrington) he notices a porter carrying a huge trunk upstairs he claims it’s the first time he’s ever seen a porter “with creases in his trousers.” Upstairs we see that the porter is no porter at all. Wimsey (Haddon) is planning to be on that train too. Mollie Ryder (Mary Newland/Lilian Oldland) tells her blackmailer, “You have to give me those letters back!”
He then goes up to his room ‑‑ Room 9 ‑‑ to finalize the packing. He forces her to continue with the scheme by holding over her head some compromising letters she was foolish enough to send to him. However, while they’re waiting in London at the station hotel to catch the boat train that’ll take them to the cross-Channel ferry, she has second thoughts.
#Silent passenger professional#
Maurice Windermere (Perrins), a professional blackmailer, has persuaded married Mollie Ryder (Newland) to run away with him to the Continent. At least in the early novels, Wimsey is depicted as, whatever his true intellectual abilities, an outwardly vacuous Bertie Wooster-like buffoon, and that’s more or less how he’s been characterized on screen ever since.Īnd let’s not forget that at one point toward the end a character says: “You know, I don’t think Lord Peter’s quite such a fool as he looks.”
#Silent passenger movie#
In this latter complaint she was in one respect absolutely correct ‑‑ the movie was obviously designed to be a vehicle for Haddon, whose specialty was effete, upper-class, seemingly perpetually squiffy twits, like Guy Bannister in Death at Broadcasting House (1934) ‑‑ but in another she was either being duplicitous or blinding herself to the true nature of her creation. Sayers, who wrote the original story upon which it was based, apparently hated it both because of what she felt was a travesty of an adaptation and because her darling Lord Peter was portrayed as an aristocrat of very considerable vacuity.
Sayers Cine: Jan Stallich Cast: John Loder, Peter Haddon, Mary Newland (i.e., Lilian Oldland), Austin Trevor, Aubrey Mather, Donald Wolfit, Leslie Perrins, Ralph Truman, Gordon McLeod, Ann Codrington, Dorice Fordred, Annie Esmond, George de Warfaz, Vincent Holman.Ī relatively early screen example of the inverted mystery story ‑‑ wherein, rather than try to puzzle out whodunnit, we know the truth from the outset and watch as the detective deduces what we already know ‑‑ this was Lord Peter Wimsey’s first screen outing. UK / 63 minutes (but see below) / bw / Phoenix, Associated British Dir: Reginald Denham Pr: Hugh Perceval Scr: Basil Mason Story: Dorothy L.
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