The Phantom Light (1935)

"The Phantom Light" was showing at the BFI as part of their Powell & Pressburger season -- I had a vague misgiving just before I bought my ticket that I had seen/been shown an extract from this before, as part of a set of railway-related clips, but in fact the scene I was thinking of never appeared. (On second thoughts I think it may have been an early British Hitchcock film.) Completely unexpected, however, was that the film turns out to open with extended footage of the Festiniog Railway in the 1930s... presumably representing the weirdest, quaintest little piece of Welshness the film-makers could think of! I did think that the scale of the track in the opening shot suggested narrow gauge, and then an unmistakable double Fairlie pops up in shot, with the protagonist sitting in one of the tiny four-wheeled 'bug boxes'!

Another complete surprise is that the lead actress is none other than Binnie Hale( Read more... )