Time Without Pity

1957 "It all started with a young girl’s scream …"
6.8| 1h28m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 22 November 1957 Released
Producted By: Harlequin Productions Ltd
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Alec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford. Alec’s father, David Graham, a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in from Canada to visit his son on death row. David then goes on a quest to try and clear his son’s name while battling “the bottle.”

Genre

Drama, Thriller, Crime

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Director

Joseph Losey

Production Companies

Harlequin Productions Ltd

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Time Without Pity Audience Reviews

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
JETTCO48 Just watched this on Talking Pictures. This channel are doing a great job in bringing us a wide range of "long missing from TV" movies, most of the time in excellent prints.Not sure what to say about this? I think Michael Redgrave is/was one of our greatest actors, but... everyone has there off days, and, in this movie, EVERYONE seems to be having an off day!Losey whips them all up into a frenzy of over acting, particularly Leo McKern & Alec McOwen, and things are not helped by the ridiculously over-wrought musical score, which at times drowns out the dialogue.By the end, I couldn't have cared less who did what to whom,and why,as I was losing the will to live!
loureedisacreep Leo McKern's performance is way over the top, with steam coming out of his ears virtually every second he's on screen. It confounds me that the police don't suspect this totally unhinged man. What is supposed to be a dark drama is driven to the realm of high comedy by McKern's performance. I'm surprised he ever got an acting job again.And the viewer is also meant to believe that Redgrave's character - pathetic with a drunken demeanor - has convinced the other characters of his son's innocence? Yeah, right.The whole movie is driven by "there's something that's been overlooked", when the police should have found the key piece of evidence in the first place.The ending is just as ridiculous. It easily assumes that if a man kills another man he therefore must have been responsible for the earlier murder too. The phone call is made, the execution is halted - on this assumption.I guess kudos should be given for the movie's atmosphere, but there are too many holes and silly melodramatics.Ernest Clark (Loftus from TV's "Doctor In The House") has a cameo appearance.
MARIO GAUCI Rather hysterical but engrossing and very well-acted melodrama (particularly by Michael Redgrave, a BAFTA nominee, and Leo McKern), ostensibly a murder mystery but with a manifest position against capital punishment.Interestingly, the culprit is known from the very beginning but, saddled with an alcoholic hero, one is never sure whether he'll be able to prove his son's innocence of murder; the denouement, then, is terrific - as unexpected as it is ironic. Losey's expressionist style (aided by Freddie Francis's chiaroscuro cinematography) is in full sway here: actually, according to film critic Gerard Legrand - writing in "The Movie" - this was the film were the director really came into his own; I can't vouch for that myself since I have yet to watch three important films he made earlier i.e. THE PROWLER (1951) and M (1951), both Hollywood productions, and THE SLEEPING TIGER (1954), Losey's first effort following his relocation to Britain.It's undeniably a powerful film though relatively verbose (it was adapted from a play by Emlyn Williams); like I said, Losey drives his actors to fever pitch and he has chosen a most capable cast - including Ann Todd, Alec McCowen, Peter Cushing, Renee' Houston, Lois Maxwell, Joan Plowright, Peter Copley and Richard Wordsworth! The only false note throughout, perhaps, is to be found in the score by Tristram Cary - which is so over-the-top that, at times, it even drowns out the dialogue!
stephen-357 Time has no pity, no sympathy, no joy and no sorrow. It's passage denotes the brevity in which the living inhabit the earth. In TIME WITHOUT PITY, a young man is dong time in prison for a murder he did not commit. A correctional institution is about to put a stop to that young man's time at the behest of the State. A father caught between the daunting task of fighting the system for more time, and forgetting time altogether at the bottom of a whisky glass. A broken woman mourning the loss of time never spent with one who's out of time. Every character in this drama is lost somewhere in their own guilt ridden space and time, but director Losey makes sure his audience is always aware, littering the screen with watches and clocks ticking like a giant timebomb about to explode as the desperately pathetic father searches for a clue to disable the alarm. Lost in an alcoholic haze that is almost dreamlike in it's ability to paralyze action, he clumsily attempts to win back for his son the time he let slip away. Is it too late? An incredibly edgy, self-aware film, TIME WITHOUT PITY clearly states its objection to the State as executioner. From the opening scene, we know the son did not commit the murder, but neither the State, "You must keep your visit short . . . we don't want to upset the prisoner," the Church, "He's given himself over to more compassionate hands," or the anti-capital punishment advocates, "We're not interested in whether young Graham is innocent or guilty," seem to have a specific interest in the individual. To make matters worse, young Graham himself has given up hope and when his father pleads, "don't give up," he asks, "What difference would it have made if you had died when you were my age?" And this question gets to the core of the film; it's resonance heavily influencing the final pivotal scene.