An absorbing Launder and Gilliat film about the denizens of a South London boarding house in 1938/9, this post-war credit to the British cinema is a touchingly human drama with fine London atmosphere and a collection of mainly eccentric characters. Richard Attenborough has a familiar early role as a cocky but panicky young man involved in crime; such expert character stars as Fay Compton, Joyce Carey and Alastair Sim are less cast to type but just as good. The settings are convincingly drab and the dialogue is believably written by Sidney Gilliat and J B Williams from a then-popular novel by Norman Collins.

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