An Inspector Calls – 70th Anniversary 4K UHD Review

This is a review about Guy Hamilton’s 1954 black and white movie An Inspector Calls; starring Alastair Sim and Arthur Young.

Celebrating the 70th anniversary of its release; An Inspector Calls gets a new 4K/UHD release from Studiocanal.

A much heralded adaptation of J.B. Priestley’s play, the screen version stars Alastair Sim (A Christmas Carol) as the eponymous policeman Poole who intrudes upon a well-to-do family in 1912 as they have a family meal with sinister results.

The Birling family are the upper class establishment, and while enjoying a pampered meal, the Inspector arrives with news of the unfortunate passing of a young working class woman in the infirmary.

Unbeknownst to all of the family, each member has encountered the young woman at some point in their lives where class hierarchy and status kept the downtrodden woman down and led to her passing in an untimely manner.

Guy Hamiliton (who would eventually direct four James Bond movies) directs with aplomb pulling the strings and showing a dab hand at different social settings in each family member’s flashback – ranging from gothic melodrama to high society social – the flashback structure recalls Ealing Studios Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Alastair Sim dressed in a black suit jacket, white shirt and tie, and black hat, in and An Inspector Calls. This image is in black and white. — Alastair Sim as Inspector Poole, in An Inspector Calls (1954). Studiocanal.

Sim (a treasure of an actor), purveys the territory like a panther in the drawing room while each member recounts the girl. His eyes doing as much as his distinctive voice does in drawing conclusions from these people’s memories.

The cast are uniformly good especially Bryan Forbes as the drunk upstart Eric Birling, who is resentful of his family’s wealth.

Adapted for the screen by Desmond Davis, and despite having a long London theatrical run in recent times, this is still the pre-eminent version of this classic tale that owes a lot to the works of Agatha Christie but is one of the great literary works of the 20th century because it thumbs its nose at the elitist branch of society in 1912; when war and economic depression would turn it on its head.

Well-dressed characters gather around in an evening parlour room scene, black and white image. — Bryan Forbes, Olga Lindo, Eileen Moore, Alastair Sim, and Arthur Young in An Inspector Calls (1954)

This version of the film has been restored by Filmfinity (London) using original 35mm camera negative film elements. This was particularly challenging as a number of broken frames had to be repaired.

Special features include a dissection by film critic Ann Smith, audio commentary by historian David Del Valle and an interview by surviving actress Jane Wenham as the girl whose story was told in flashback.