Nowhere to Go

Paul Gregory (George Nader), who is serving a prison sentence for grand theft, escapes from a London jail, hoping to retrieve the loot. But when his accomplice takes the key to the safe deposit box, he finds himself betrayed and deprived of his share. His greatest hope becomes a young woman (Maggie Smith who received her first screen credit and first film award nomination) from a respectable family, who hides him at her parents’ country estate in Wales. Holt’s directorial debut was a late film noir, sustained by Paul Beeson’s sharply focused black-and-white cinematography and a jazz score—a first in an Ealing production—by trumpeter Dizzy Reece. “A cool, supremely visual thriller that in terms of its minimal dialogue and daring narrative playfulness is closer to the world of Jean-Pierre Melville than to any British precedents.” (David Thomson)