Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

A blind playwright, Phillip Hannon, is sitting in a pub when he overhears a suspicious conversation. The two people in the next booth appear to be plotting a crime. Hannon informs the police but they are convinced his suspicions are merely due to the workings of his dramatical mind. Undeterred, he sets out to work out the mystery himself. However, this puts his own life in danger.Mildly interesting. The main plot has a Hitchcockian feel to it, reinforced by it resembling Rear Window but with a blind man instead of a man unable to walk. (Interestingly, Rear Window was released only two years previously). Unfortunately, that's where any resemblance to an Alfred Hitchcock drama ends. While there is some intrigue, there is little tension, as director Henry Hathaway just lets things go on without upping the pace or creating any real sense of danger. The plot is far from watertight, highlighted by a final twist that, while unforeseen, doesn't entirely make sense.This said, it is intriguing enough to not be a total waste of time.

When a successful playwright looses his eyesight, he retires to London and becomes a recluse, only coming out to go to a local pub and the theater one of his plays is running at. At the pub, he overhears a plot being hatched, and thanks to old flame Vera Miles comes back to life as he works with Scotland Yard to figure out what it's all about. The senses of the blind are well utilized as his wits take over where his eyes cannot. But there's danger about as his bitterness continues to guide him and Miles begins to feel disillusioned by his increasing distance.Starting off slowly but picking up steam, this is one of those thrillers where the clues don't come often, but when they do, they are extremely important. A tense moment has Johnson nearly falling to his death in an abandoned building, and the sinister villain, remaining unknown other than a voice only Johnson has heard, closes in. Obviously influenced by "Rear Window", this is memorable on its own merits, with Johnson giving one of his best performances. Elsa Lanchaster is amusing as an eccentric (what else?) Barmaid, while a cast of well known British character actors play a variety of droll characters.

Passable suspenser despite a rather muddled script that doesn't acquaint us well with either the suspects or the plot developments. Thus the mystery part minimizes needed involvement. Johnson does an acceptable job feigning a blind man, but perhaps his biggest triumph is removing any sentimentality from Hannon's affliction. Thus the film never, to its credit, descends into the kind of treacle it so easily could have. In fact, Hannon remains understandably irascible throughout.That tightrope struggle on the crumbling roof is a real nail-biter and the film's dramatic highpoint. But frankly the showdown in Hannon's darkened apartment lacks the skillful development of, say, Wait Until Dark (1967), to become memorable. The live London backdrop, however, adds a lot of interesting color and is well photographed. And though she's winsome as heck, Vera Miles is largely wasted in a part that many lesser actresses could have filled. Anyway, the movie's an acceptable time passer with a few good moments, but I'll bet it's not on Scotland Yard's Must-See list.

Van Johnson is a blind playwright who is visiting London with his adoring girl friend, Vera Miles, and is attended to by his valet or butler or bootle boy or whatever these guys are called, Cecil Park in another comic role.Well, Johnson is at his wits end. Now blind, he can't see any future for his professional self, and of course he doesn't want to burden his beautiful and compliant friend, Vera Miles, with a husband who can't take care of himself. (I would.) One night at the local pub he overhears a mysterious and ominous conversation between a raspy voiced man and a frightened woman. Something about a plot, maybe to kidnap a couple of high-end children for ransom. He's not sure.But the mystery now animates him, re-energizes his life, fills him to bursting with élan vital. He's determined to track down the apparent conspirators, though he doesn't know what they look like. He only knows which bus line the woman takes to her job as nanny, and he knows which perfume she wears -- La Nuit d'Amour or Fleur de Lys or La Petite Mort or some equally vainglorious French name.It's dangerous work though -- for him, Miles, and Parker. There really IS a game afoot, and they discover that Johnson is on their trail. There follow some extremely tense moments, no kidding, ending with the inevitable scene in which the blind hero and the chief heavy are together in a totally dark room.It's always interesting to have a story with a disabled hero. Howard Northrop Frye divided heroes into several kinds. Let's see. There was the high mimetic. That would be James Bond, better than anybody else around. There was the low mimetic. That's more like the typical Hitchcock hero, no better and no worse than average, like Cary Grant unable to figure out that George Kaplan doesn't exist. Then there is the ironic hero, who is dumb and naive, like Candide, or disabled like Van Johnson here -- tapping around with his cane on the edge of the fourth floor (or third, in London) of a building whose walls have been blown away, teetering helplessly over empty space.It's pretty atmospheric and well written. Johnson is no mastermind, and he doesn't have second sight. He makes mistakes. He goes out into a street that's cloaked in fog, meets an opposition goon with a black belt in bullshit, and asks for guidance through the murk of the unfamiliar city. Later, the thug says, "Rather thinned out a bit," and Johnson agrees, although by this time the fog has lifted entirely and Johnson's reply reveals his absence of sight.It's not on television very often and I try to catch it when it is. The name of the nanny that Johnson is searching for is "Janet Murch." I love that name. Janet Murch. It's so terribly British. It brushes elbows with Charles Dickens. It could be Doris Buckle.