21 Days

Based on a John Galsworthy story, scripted by Dean and Graham Greene, edited by Charles Crichton and starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier with a smallish part for Robert Newton, you've heard the best about this creaky British matinee melodrama in the Hitchcockian manner that tells the story of a man, Larry Darrent (Olivier), who accidentally kills the blackmailing husband of his lover, Wanda (Leigh).  Someone else is arrested for the crime and found guilty leaving Larry and Wanda three weeks together before he must give himself up or let an innocent man (Francis L. Sullivan) go to the gallows. Expect a plot twist.

There's some interesting footage of  pre-Blitz Thames-side London in the latter part of the film as Larry and his girl decide to have a jolly good time before he hands himself in for manslaughter but the rest is studio-bound and fairly cheaply done at that. Leigh, who is supposed to be of Russian descent, to prove her foreignness, in lieu of a plausible accent, unconvincingly enunciates every word of her dialogue making her the most obvious symptom of an overall contrived production.

 

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