23 Paces to Baker Street (1956)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

23 Paces to Baker Street (1956) – H. Hathaway

Nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes but definitely in a Hitchcock mood.  Van Johnson plays a bitter blind playwright, an American in London, who overhears an ambiguous conversation in a pub that suggests foul play.  He tries to get the police interested but when they aren’t, he starts investigating on his own with the help of his manservant Bob (Cecil Parker) and his ex-girlfriend (Vera Miles).  One clue leads to another and soon the trio really thinks they have uncovered a fiendish plot to do with kidnapping (the MacGuffin of this story, which doesn’t necessarily need to make much sense – it just motivates the action).  Of course, Johnson is quickly in over his head and the bad guys seek to silence him, creating suspense (we know that this will end happily, so the suspense is in figuring out how Johnson will defeat those out to get him).  1950s cinemascope in that strange technicolor world that existed in Hitchcock’s films (and other films of this era) but perhaps nowhere else.  Worth a look, if not on par with the Master.