Underground – review

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/10/underground-review

Version 0 of 1.

Anthony Asquith's 1928 black-and-white silent, Underground, restored three years ago with a great new score by Neil Brand, is now on general release, and it's terrific: an elegantly crafted melodrama with exotic and futurist London locations, and echoes of Lang and Hitchcock. Norah Baring is fascinating as the wronged woman, Kate, given to strange OCD mannerisms and sightless staring: a performance to compare with Kathleen Byron in Powell's Black Narcissus. Two men fall in love with the same woman – demure shopworker Nell (Elissa Landi) – whom they see on the London Underground. Bill (Brian Aherne) is a decent chap who works on the Tube, but Bert (Cyril McLaglen) is a rougher, moodier sort, who is prepared to exploit his ex-girlfriend Kate in a plot to destroy Bill's chances. This love triangle evolves into a quadrangle, and from urban pastoral into intense psychodrama, culminating in a colossal pub brawl between the two love rivals, the result of which causes Bert to brood toxically. Fans of the Underground scenes in Sam Mendes's Skyfall will enjoy the brio of Asquith's pioneering Tube sequences, which bring out the comedy and tension.