Portrait of Alison

1956 "A post card killer threatens artists, models, diamonds and MURDER!"
6.4| 1h24m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 18 January 1956 Released
Producted By: Insignia Films
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

An actress and an artist are linked by his brother to deadly smugglers sought by Scotland Yard.

Genre

Drama, Crime

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Director

Guy Green

Production Companies

Insignia Films

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Portrait of Alison Audience Reviews

Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** British film noir having to do with a mysterious postcard sent from Italy that's responsible, in trying to get their hands on it, for some half dozen murders. It's American in London artist Tim Forrester,Robert Beatty, who realizes the importance of the mysterious and missing, in the mail, postcard in that it was sent to him by his brother interpol agent Lou Forrester just before he was killed with a woman hitchhiker in a car crash outside Milan city limits. The shocking news was relaid to Tim by his kid brother commercial pilot Dave Forrester, William Sylvester, who was the last person to see him before his fatal accident.In trying to find out the circumstances behind his brother and hitchhiker's, said to be actress Alison not actor Harrison Ford, deaths Tim soon realizes that there was foul play involved in their so-called car accident! Things get even stranger when the model Jill Stewart, Josephine Griffin,who was posing for Tim is found strangled in his loft making him the #1 suspect in her murder. What makes thing even wilder is that the hitchhiker who supposedly was killed in the car accident together with Lou actress Alison Ford, Terry Moore, turned up alive in London and in fact was the person who discovered the murdered model Jill Stewart's body!****SPOILERS**** All these murders turned out to be connected to a postcard, of a wine bottle, that Lou Forrester sent to his brother Tim just before he was killed. It's discovered on that postcard with invisible ink and under under ultra violet light that Lou listed the members of a diamond smuggling ring that's working out of London that brother Dave is a part of! This leads the police as well as Tim to the person behind all this smuggling and murder known only as "Nightingale". It was "Nightengale" coming out of the shadows or closet in order to silence those, like Tim & Alison, who were on to him that caused his sudden demise. That by him trying to be so overcautious in his operations he in the end blew his cover in trying to murder Alison, that he met back in Italy, whom he thought could connect him with the jewel smuggling ring that he was in charge of. She couldn't but Lou's mysterious postcard certainly could and did!
ksf-2 This UK film from 1955 opens with a car racing along the road, over the cliff it goes, and bursts into flames when it hits the canyon below. Geoffrey Keen is Inspector Cobly, who is investigating the accident. We are introduced to Tim and Dave, the brothers of the deceased driver. You'll recognize "Henry" (Allan Cuthbertson) from Fawlty Towers, and whole lot of British TV. I see Hopscotch (AWESOME film) in Cuthberson's list of roles, but can't remember what he did in it. Tim (Robert Beatty) also starts checking out what's going on, and he bumps into people who have the answers, but don't want to give them up. Terry Moore stars as Alison, and seems to be at the center of all this grand adventure. Pretty entertaining. I've never seen this one before, and as of today, doesn't have any comments on the discussion board. Must be new to Turner Classics. There is a twist here and there, but nothing earth shattering. Story by Francis Durbridge, who wrote this in between all the (British) TV series for which he was known. Directed by Guy Green, who had received an Oscar for directing the 1948 Great Expectations.
last-picture-show Originally a television series based on a story by crime writer Francis Durbridge, Portrait of Alison (AKA Postmark For Danger) is a neat thriller with enough twists and turns to keep anyone guessing. An excellent cast, especially Robert Beatty as artist Tim Forrester, who does a good job of underplaying the character, and Alan Cuthbertson in his screen debut, the first in a long line of oily villains. Also watch out for minor uncredited roles by Sam Kydd as a chirpy telephone engineer, Jack Howarth (later to play Albert Tatlock in long running ITV soap Coronation Street) as a hotel porter and Frank Thornton (later to play Captain Peacock in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served ) as a policeman.
bmacv With its distant echoes of Laura, Postmark for Danger (a.k.a. Portrait of Alison) survives as one of the few English crime dramas of the post-war period with some of the grit and menace of American film noir. (Americans, plus one Canadian, make up the principal cast. But the film betrays its British provenance with its assumption of the utter incorruptibility of the London police - a notion that wouldn't pass muster on the west side of the Atlantic - as well as with its the-butler-did-it resolution.)Robert Beatty, a commercial artist, hears some bad news from his pilot-for-hire brother (William Sylvester): a third brother has died in a fiery car crash in Italy, along with a young actress he had met. Then strange things begin to happen: The police grow interested in a postcard his dead brother may have sent him, as do elements of the underworld; and the father of the actress commissions him to paint a portrait, working from a photograph, of his daughter. Next, he returns to find the portrait vandalized, the photograph missing, and his favorite model dead in his bedroom, wearing the gown in the painting. He becomes the prime suspect in the murder when no evidence can be found to support his wild claims - until the supposedly dead actress (Terry Moore) shows up at his door.At the end of the day, Postmark for Danger settles down into a tidy police procedural about a ring of diamond smugglers. But for much of its course it unfurls in a tantalizing mist of eerie and unlikely coincidences, many of them centering on the word `nightingale.' Credit should probably go to director Guy Green, who started out as a cinematographer (he shot David Lean's Great Expectations). It's an enjoyable if minor entry, albeit one with just a little bit extra.