The Halfway House (1944) Online

Britain, World War II.

A symphony conductor who has a few months to live.

A war profiteer.

A husband and wife coming to the end of their marriage, their daughter desperate to keep them together.

An elderly couple conflicted over the death of their son in the line of duty.

All of them wind up together at the Halfway House, a beautiful, yet strange Welsh country inn. Their hosts are Rhys and Gwyneth, the place appears to be stuck in a time warp, all the visitors here are here for a reason, a reason that will changed all their respective lives for ever.

Based on the Denis Ogden play, The Halfway House is brought to us from the wonderful Ealing Studios, it is, all things considered, an under seen gem from that particular Studio. There really is no great surprises as regards how the film unfolds, the makers, by way of Mervyn Johns first appearance, are not trying to bluff the viewer in any way, this is a halfway house after all. What drives the picture on is the unflinching stubbornness of the characters, despite the overwhelming evidence available to them, they all refuse to accept the mysterious hammer hitting them over the head. This makes the film a highly enjoyable piece, the mixture of comedy and mystery going hand in hand with it's fantasy led core, come the final reel the viewers should be in a state of warmth because in my honest opinion the film has undoubtedly done its job.

It's one of those films that wouldn't be out of place on Rod Serling's Twilight Zone show that aired some 15 years later, so enjoy the fantasy and the mystery unfolding, The Halfway House is a lovely little picture. 8/10

Never having been a fan of the concept of the dead returning to advise the living, I was none-the-less pleased with this charming film. The tragedies that occur during war-time can often be treated as 'due course' by most of us, but we are not usually those who have suffered a loss. Like many stories involving benevolent ghosts or angels, the supernatural beings are metaphors for the hand of God in the lives of the living, seeking to influence them along a better path than that which they currently pursue.

'Halfway House' is a kind-hearted, quirky little film, with talented character performances. Sally Ann Howes, the gifted musical actress, plays an early role as the daughter of an estranged couple heading for divorce. Her performance was amusing and poignant, as she tries to think of ways to get her parents back together. Françoise Rosay's character desperately attempts spiritualism, trying to contact her only son who has died in the war. They, and the other guests at a ghostly Welsh inn, seem to take a somewhat 'oh, well, so that's it' attitude toward their dearly-departed innkeepers, which makes the film that much more appealing. 'Halfway House' is exactly what it was intended to be, a comfort and a lesson.

This was the first Ealing film I saw, knowing it was an Ealing film, because it was shown as part of a long Ealing film series on UK BBC2 from May 1977. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although then at 18 years old the wartime propaganda element of it paradoxically irritated much more than it does forty years later. Is it blood running cooler or a more resigned luxury of perspective in operation? I feel I have to repeatedly point out with British films made in wartime that present day allowances must be made: if the people in this movie had lost the war they were fighting I wouldn't be here writing this nor you reading it. But if the people who made the film could come back would they think their efforts then were worthwhile is another matter though… Every week during that TV series my admiration and awe grew until I realised that British cinema would never again match the art and craft displayed by Ealing at their peak in the '40's and '50's; and by now I've watched some of their classics over a dozen times. However I find that I've seen The Halfway House for only the fourth time - maybe it was meant to be revisited only once in a while, like the ghostly inn itself.

A group of relatively unhappy temporal travellers find themselves drawn to and ensconced in a weird country inn in Wales complete with an unsettling landlord and his daughter who cast no shadows but end up casting large ones over the guests (and us), and for their own good. They were all fighting their own battles and problems but I admit! the biggest problem was that mine host Mervyn Johns was so firmly robotic in his anti-Nazi propaganda and posturing that his imperiousness ultimately became unconvincing and tiresome. It's a very gentle ghost story but at least it wasn't a musical like Brigadoon. Rather moralistic too and there's an array of familiar faces in here to back it all up: Tom Walls, more taciturn now; Alfred Drayton, Joss Ambler and rakish Guy Middleton, all as sharp as ever; Esmond Knight, in rural Wales one year before he memorably played a village idiot and a psycho in rural England; Sally Ann Howes, so posh you realise what today's inclusive society has lost or gained depending on your own prejudices. Sure that's not Wylie Watson playing one of the Welsh porters? There's plenty of beautiful atmospheric photography amid some lovely country and excellent sets. Favourite bits: Johns in a remarkably underplayed scene of mirror-trickery and his daughter Glynnis – like Peter Pan, in a clever for the time scene of shadow-trickery; the extended dinner conversation.

There's a few trite moments mainly involving the belief in the afterlife and the acting is rather stagey at the best of times but all in all it's still great escapist entertainment, which has imho er withstood the test of Time. And to hopefully echo back to the cast Glynnis's gentle farewell: good night to you all, see you in the morning.

I can't understand how anyone could fail to love this film. It is touching not least because it was made while the war was still on, even if by 1944 the outcome was beyond doubt. There was a special magic in knowing that the innkeeper and his daughter were actually played by a real life father and daughter.

Yes, it is shameless propaganda and pulling at the heartstrings - but isn't that forgivable during the worst war ever fought?

SPOILER ALERT I only wish that people from the past would get in touch with me and let me know what the present situation is.

Mervyn Johns and his real life daughter Glynnis shine in this ghostly 1944 film and I disagree with most of the negative comments from other users above.Consequently I have rated this film 7/10.The other users seem to have either forgotten or misunderstood the average conditions that Britons were living under then and indeed up to 1955 when food rationing was abolished in the UK.

London Live TV station here in the UK is currently running a festival of Ealing films Mon-Sat starting @ 2p.m. which gives a chance for this slightly younger viewer (born in 1946), the chance to see their less frequently aired films.I notice they do tend to repeat these films so people who miss the original showing can catch up with it.This was my first viewing 17/7/15 and me and my wife (born 1947) enjoyed it immensely.I take on board the criticism of rather preachy dialogue about redemption but Britain dare I say was a more formally religious country then.Atonement for past misdemeanours was understandable with the population facing unexpected death from the V1 & V2s.

"The Halfway House" is one of the strangest films from the 1940s I can recall having seen. This is not a bad thing, as it abounds with originality and is well worth seeing.

The story is set during WWII and the film consists of many stories and characters who all share one thing in common...they all have gone to the same quaint Welsh inn to take their vacations. But most of these people are carrying burdens of one sort or another...such as broken marriages, sons killed in the war, ill health and much more. What none of them realize for some time is that this house is somehow back in time...and it's somehow a year earlier! Why and what all this means, you'll just have to see for yourself.

The film has exceptional writing and very nice acting. Stick with it, as it does start slowly and a few of the characters are at first rather annoying.

A random group of characters go to the Halfway House in Wales to get away from the pressures of their daily lives. The innkeeper Mervyn Johns (Rhys) and his daughter Glynis Johns (Gwyneth) are on hand to greet the guests and give them advice. However, they don't seem to have reflections, they don't have shadows and they are living 1 year in the past - the calendar, the newspapers and radio broadcasts are out of date and the guest book hasn't been signed for a year. Who are the mysterious owners and what fate awaits the guests....?

The acting from some of the cast seems a bit stiff at times but the film keeps you watching. I like the more touching scenes, for instance, when Glynis Johns talks to the conductor Esmond Knight (David Davies) in the kitchen and tells him to come over to her "side", and the moment when they agree to see each other the next morning, knowing the fate of the inn. Captain Tom Walls (Harry Meadows) also has an impressive character transformation through the course of the film. It is a film with a mixture of strange incidents and it has, I think, an ambiguous ending. After several views, I think I get what happens…."Yea though I walk through the valley of death..........."

Surprisingly good camera work and color balance for a drama filmed in 1944. Even the out-of-doors scenes are crisp and the light is well balanced.

A group of strangers check-into an inn, each have their own emotional problems. The plot is interesting enough to hold the audiences attention, although a little slow moving in parts. The acting was very solid.

This is a very time-period relevant film. It really accurately reflects the attitudes, values and behaviors of middle class wartime Britain. A little slice of the Welsh countryside during war years.

I guess most reviewers are too young to remember the mind set of people at home during war. This film IMO reflects a very present concern of many people in coming to terms with grief. Spiritualism had always been important from the mid 19th century with a falling off towards the end of the century. But with a major resurgence in 1914 and WW1. The young men of whole communities in England died because of recruiting ploys like the "Pals Brigades". With this in mind, the central theme of this 1944 film (fifth year of WW2 for England) will have struck chords with many in the audience. Only 20 years separated the two WWs - not long enough to forget.

Spiritualism was never in "conflict" with science. Many 19th C. scientists studied spiritualism with the same avidity as electricity or radio waves. A couple of years ago, I went along with a friend to a spiritualist meeting in an English provincial town. I was surprised by some of what I saw and heard but most striking was the attempt by the spiritualist to give comfort to the people there. A comfort that was gratefully received.

I am not advocating spiritualism just as I would not advocate the use of placebos to the exclusion of doctors. But I have lived long enough in many countries and cultures to have experienced some pretty strange things. Keeping open a little window of uncertainty and doubt in a PC world where many know all the answers.

This tongue-in-cheek film is interesting from a number of aspects. The spiv (still reviled in my youth in England), the war-split couple, the lost child, the spiritualist seeking solace... They may seem quaint today but will have struck chords with many in the audience which is what cinema is all about.

Even the RAF father of one of the reviewers may have been unhappy with the film because it did not delve deeply enough into what was an everyday reality for him and his colleagues. Death for him was just around the corner, very real, and no theatrical imitation could possibly approach that reality.

This film taught me a few things and reinforced other things about what it was like for my parents generation.

This review was written by my Grandad in 1944 in a letter sent to my Grandmother whilst he was serving at the RAF camp at Woodbridge...

Tonight I've just seen another picture here in camp... It was "Half Way House" and was about a lonely Welsh inn to which a number of people are fated to find their way. The hosts a charming young Welsh couple are really ghosts and the inn too was ghostly for it had been bombed and burnt out a year before, though no signs are visible and the only strange thing is that the young couple have no shadows. These two help the other people to sort out their lives and the final scenes show the inn being bombed again just as it had been a year before.

The acting in this picture was atrocious, the worst I've seen for years, and it was in my opinion badly directed for it could have been an outstanding picture.

I had high hopes for this once I discovered that it existed and was available to view at the newly-named Southbank Centre. In the event I was disappointed in the extreme. The acting in the main veers from Balsa wood to out-and-out mahogany and you can see what's coming from the first reel. Speaking of first reels this one seems very clumsy in its exposition - basically we're in Ten Little Indians territory i.e. we need to establish several assorted people converging on a specific location - telegraphing its intention with banner captions - Cardiff, The West End, etc - then going into seemingly endless 'business' to explain exactly who everyone is and why they are particularly unhappy and in need of the kind of R&R that can only be provided by an inn (shades of The Enchanted Cottage) that no longer exists. Father and daughter Mervyn and Glynis Johns are the hosts and apart from them the only half-decent acting comes from Francoise Rosay. Arguable novelty appeal.

The concept sounds interesting and I wanted to like this film; but in practice it didn't really draw me in.

It's more or less a portmanteau picture, where multiple separate stories are presented under an umbrella device (in this case, travellers all staying at the same inn), but it doesn't work so well as, for example, "Dead of Night", which Ealing was to bring out a couple of years later. All the characters end up getting rather cursory treatment, possibly due to lack of screen time; my instinctive reaction was that the various guests don't really interact with each other, but I'm not sure this is strictly true. Still, I feel that the only case where the ensemble really has an effect on the outcome is in the case of the sea captain and his wife, where it is precisely the interaction with strangers that is significant in tipping the balance...

Special effects are, unfortunately, rather clumsy. This really wouldn't matter if they hadn't been gratuitously introduced in the first place: if the script hadn't made such a to-do over characters 'not casting a shadow', I wouldn't have found myself noticing all the subsequent occasions in which they most undoubtedly do so, not to mention the fact that a shadow is, alas, clearly visible beneath the girl's feet in the very scene in question. Likewise back-projection on the close-ups would be less noticeable if the long shots of the same scene hadn't shown that the characters actually were present on location at the time... Technical facilities during wartime were, obviously, limited and this sort of thing wouldn't matter if the film itself had been more absorbing; but sadly it evidently wasn't.

The innkeeper and his daughter are presented as unwarrantedly saintly by virtue of being dead; they are clearly supposed to have a direct line to The Truth, and everything they say is to be taken as gospel. It did come across as a bit heavy-handed, and a lot of the film suffers from this same preachy atmosphere: it's almost a Ministry of Information production lecturing on how the populace should handle Problems of Wartime. Sally Ann Howes has a "Parent-Trap" role which is generally directed to provide comic relief, though she has a couple of effectively-played moments as the little girl out of her depth in the middle of divorce; Esmond Knight, as the only man with prior knowledge of the inn's fate, has little to do but play the piano in the background.

(I did find this character's Acceptance of Fate particularly baffling; he is informed at the outset that he has only a few months to live if, and only if, he continues sacrificing his health to his work, and that otherwise he may live on for years. He arrives at the Halfway House with the specific intention of taking a rest, thus presumably having taken the doctor's warning to heart. And yet his final outcome is to accept imminent death -- a death that will surely only occur if he persists in his self-destructive conducting schedule? David Davies is no R.J.Mitchell, nor even a Vicky Lester -- driving himself to death will not save Britain, or even create irreplaceable art. So why does the film lecture us that he needs to contribute to his own demise, rather than simply slow down a little and save his talent for future performances?)

"The Halfway House" does contain some lovely landscape photography of Wales, and there are some charming and effective scenes. But I wouldn't honestly bother recommending it to anyone as a long-lost Ealing gem, and -- ironically for a picture whose plot revolves around an inn suspended in time since its destruction -- it doesn't possess that timeless quality that enables the best of British films to go on entertaining long after their intended audience has passed.

THE HALFWAY HOUSE is another spooky drama from Ealing Studios; anyone who enjoyed their sublime anthology DEAD OF NIGHT will be sure to like this one too. The slow-pased story involves a bunch of characters who through various twists of fate come to stay at the titular location, a country inn hosted by the excellent Mervyn Johns as the nervy proprietor. His real-life daughter Glynis is around too. After the usual camaraderie the characters begin to notice odd things about the location, although the plot twist will be very obvious from the outset for any modern viewers. Still, this is well acted and well directed, exploring wartime nihilism, nostalgia, and liminality in a fresh and moving way.