Four in the Morning

Directed by Anthony Simmons (1965) **1/2

VCI Entertainment continues to release obscure and B-level British films on DVD, due to their arrangement with the British distributor Renown Pictures. Many of these films haven’t been seen in the U.S. since their initial releases (some, maybe not ever). The 1965 Four in the Morning is one of the more promising titles, as Judi Dench made few movies in the ’60s; Four in the Morning was her second film.

Four tells three stories concurrently, all taking place at the same time in the shipping district along the Thames River. Judi Dench plays a mother (none of the characters in the film are named) dealing with a teething baby while her husband and a jokester friend (Norman Rodway and Joe Melia) spend the night carousing. When the boys show up home, resentments and anger result in fuming, taunts and arguments. The second tale concerns a young man (Brian Phelan) trying to put the make on a lonely lounge singer (Ann Lynn). The last story is a procedural concerning a dead woman pulled by police from the river. We’re never shown the woman’s face. Is she the Judi Dench or Ann Lynn character, murdered or driven to suicide?

Four in the Morning was directed by Anthony Simmons, who was earlier a fellow traveler of the mid-’50s Free Cinema movement, founded by documentary directors determined to make work of a non-ideological nature. With its location shooting of the foggy, early morning Thames, Four often has the look of a documentary. It also shows the influence of the French New Wave and has much thematically in common with the contemporary Kitchen Sink drama movement making an impact in British film, drama and paintings.

Four in the Morning, however, never comes within close qualitative distance of those films, written by artists like Nigel Kneale, John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe. Simmons’ original screenplay gets the locale and character types right, but the interactions between them are often tedious and unbelievable. Dench’s husband, for example, seems to have the temperament of a ten-year old (his friend’s even worse). For a real marital spat on film, we’d have to wait one year later for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Ann Lynn and Brian Phelan’s conversations along the peers, which include the stealing of a motorboat, end in sad disconnection; after having only known each other for hours, she tells him she loves him and is upset he won’t return the sentiment.

The melancholy music score was written by John Barry (of James Bond theme fame). The sound quality of the DVD, though, is imperfect; it sometimes has the tell-tale “swooshing” sound of a recording transferred at too low of a digital bit rate.

—Michael R. Neno, 2016 December 17