The Upturned Glass (1947)
Directed by Lawrence Huntington

Film Review

Before they took over and effectively ruined Gainsborough Productions, independent film producers Sydney and Betty Box produced this dark melodrama, one which cunningly appropriates most of the tropes of Gainsborough's films and uses them effectively in a more up-to-date and realistic kind of film. Within its murky, noir-like passages, The Upturned Glass carries the seeds of the psycho-thriller genre that would become enormously popular just over a decade later, and James Mason's paranoiac killer is a virtual template for the run of unsuspected murdering fiends that would chill audiences from 1960 onwards, beginning with Carl Boehm's Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom and Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates in Psycho.

At the time of making this film, Mason was on the brink of international stardom.  He was already one of the biggest attractions at the British box office in the 1940s, having distinguished himself in various amoral or villainous roles in Gainsborough's melodramas, including The Man in Grey (1943).   The Upturned Glass was the first film he produced, in partnership with the Box siblings, and gave him the chance to play a thoroughly disturbing individual - a lunatic who is so completely unaware of his mental derangement that he not only deceives himself but also the world in which he operates so successfully as a brilliant surgeon.  The imaginative, well-written script was co-authored by Mason's wife at the time, here credited as Pamela Kellino, who also appears in the film, interestingly as the woman Mason intends to murder.  (Some years later, their marriage would end in an acrimonious and high-profile divorce after Kellino was repeatedly unfaithful to her husband.)

Whilst the noirish title The Upturned Glass vaguely suggests some kind of mental aberration its meaning is only explained in passing near the end of the film, and then still hardly makes any sense.  It offers no real clue as to what the film is about, which perhaps makes its gimmicky plot twist and grim denouement all the more surprising.  Mason's brooding presence brings an intense Gothic solemnity to the proceedings, which is helped by Reginald H. Wyer's atmospheric photography - both suggest, subtly at first, less so towards the end, a mind warped by paranoia and delusion.  There are echoes of Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), the same unsettling sense of anticipation as the monster slowly emerges from the shadows and shows how fragile and horribly unpredictable the human psyche can be.

After a slow build-up, the pay-off comes when Mason lures Kellino to a shadowy and deserted abode and attempts to slay her 'for real'.  It's possibly the grimmest thing to have been seen in a British film up until this point, and Mason has never appeared more terrifying as he goes completely over the edge, still clinging to the insane belief that his crime is a just crime as he brutally drives a terrified and possibly innocent woman to her death.  The film does not end here but carries on with Mason's mental state deteriorating further as he struggles to rid himself of the dead body and ends up being hoist on his own moral petard.  The Upturned Glass is essentially just a modern reworking of Crime and Punishment, yet it concludes in a far bleaker vein than Dostoyevsky's novel - what hope of redemption can there be for a man who believes with absolute conviction that he has a moral obligation to decide who should live and who should die?  There is nothing more dangerous than a man who is sure he is sane.

Film Synopsis

A criminologist presents the case history of a supposedly sane criminal, a man who executed a well-planned murder for entirely rational reasons.  Before he committed his crime, Michael Joyce was a highly respected Harley Street surgeon specialising in brain injuries.  It has been some years since his wife left him and he has since devoted himself to his work.  After curing a little girl of her impending blindness, he falls in love with her mother, Emma Wright, and a happy romance ensues.  The return of Emma's husband to the country puts an end to their affair and Joyce resumes his solitary bachelor existence.  The next he hears of Emma is that she committed suicide by falling from a bedroom window at her house in the country.  Joyce manages to convince himself that she was pushed to her death by her egocentric step-sister Kate Howard and decides to kill her to avenge Emma's death.  The murder is carried off without a hitch and no one suspects Joyce had any part in Kate's apparent suicide.  It's a scenario for the perfect murder, and all that remains is for someone to put it into practice...