GREEN FOR DANGER (1946) **1/2 Before British cinema picked up so many great-or at least consistently useful-ideas from Hollywood, British cinema had an identity of its own: more or less electric theater. The actors were all accomplished, but looked like people you might meet. Even the screen shots were set up to look like they might be readily achieved on a stage. The pacing had that theatrical sense, and everyone worked off a rhythm demanding that too much be read into it. A good mystery must remain a mystery until the secret is revealed, just before final curtain, and so it is. Good fun, actually, and quite clever. Trevor Howard is in great evidence, all the more pleasing as so many of his mannerisms were passed-no doubt genetically and culturally-on to his son Ronald Howard, the greatest of all Sherlock Holmes. I can't say that I consider this a great film, but it is evidence of a great link, part of a great bridge between theatre and cinema...that has been largely lost, is rarely revived, and even then too often with so much pomp and self-circumstance that the natural essence of the spirit required is inevitably lost.
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